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Jul 10, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Syd Fini |Moeen Farrokhi |Razieh Mehdizadeh |Isabella Corletto
The prisoner depicted here is Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a protestor who said these words on a phone call from prison to his father. He was executed by the Islamic Republic regime on January 7, 2023, alongside another protestor, Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini. The man depicted here as being put on trial is the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
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Jun 20, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Victor Heringer |Amit Dutta |Isabella Corletto |Jintu Gitarth
The trees were dry and brown, the earth and sky buried under layers of dust. With Ankur in the backseat, Diganta maneuvered his scooter through the dust clouds. The recent flood had left the paved road bumpy. Whenever the scooter leaped across potholes, Ankur grabbed Diganta tighter. They rode past the crowds, leaving behind even the smaller villages. Now, unending fields covered either side of the road, empty and lonely.
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Jun 6, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nathalie Handal |Isabella Corletto
If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible CitiesCan you describe the mood of Gaza as you feel/see it? Bleak, yet hopeful and resilient. Since 2008, Israel has launched four major attacks against Gaza, besieging it from the sky, sea, and land. Gaza is kept isolated from the whole world: very few people can leave it or visit it.
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May 22, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Alfred Schaffer |Isabella Corletto |Wesley Lewis |Babeth Fonchie Fotchind
a woman is a woman because of a womangrandmother uses a stick to draw a pattern in the copper sand, sendsa signal to god by way of three half moons. recently she spoke tothe seer, he shook a bag of palm seeds twenty-one times.
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May 18, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nathalie Handal |Isabella Corletto
If each city is like a game of chess, the day when I have learned the rules, I shall finally possess my empire, even if I shall never succeed in knowing all the cities it contains. —Italo Calvino, Invisible CitiesCan you describe the mood of Jericho as you feel/see it? I see Jericho emerging on the horizon when we are driving toward it from Bethlehem.
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May 15, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Alfred Schaffer |Jaime Huenún Villa |Isabella Corletto |Wesley Lewis
Mira Akí!I cannot sleepicy night light keeps me awake. out of bed and to the kitchen in the pitch dark. teddy clamped under my arm. hellish glow and two shadows at the counter. one white shadow and one black. doing the washing up. sweet boy are you awakeasks the white one, startled. come here can’t sleep again huhsays the black one. I dreamed I had to bury both of you on my ownI don’t say as I rub my eyes. well you’re right we’re stone deadnothing to worry aboutjust go back to bed and sleep.
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May 8, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Siddique Alam |Sinan Antoon |Isabella Corletto
Jharna Hembrom’s eyes were so prone to stickiness that, in the morning when she awoke, she had to use her fingers to force apart her eyelids. Today, her right eye had only partially opened, and she was walking about like that, attending to her morning chores, and cleaning the pigs’ trough. And the day kept barging into her right eye. She would have to somehow fully open her eye to shut it properly. She tried a number of times but the corners of her eyelids remained stuck.
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May 3, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Sabda Armandio |Isabella Corletto |Nina Perrotta
When Naima’s elephant appeared in our street for the first time, people finally believed what Nuwayra, Ghurab’s wife, had been saying all along regarding the annoying patter up on the rooftops, which is that it was caused by a small elephant that Naima recently acquired.
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May 2, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Laksmi Pamuntjak |Amit Dutta |Tobias Carroll |Isabella Corletto
You’d better not think just because we’re married and middle-aged we’ve stopped fantasizing about other men. That’s what your friends say, and to fit in you laugh casually. But in truth you never fantasize about anyone, including your own husband, nor about sex of any kind—not revenge sex, kinky sex, or casual sex just to feel a warm body and pass the time. You only think about three things. One: Money (that you don’t have). Two: Your only child (who’s already married and lives abroad).
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Apr 27, 2023 | 
wordswithoutborders.org | Nisrine Mbarki |Amit Dutta |Isabella Corletto
In these three poems, Nisrine Mbarki contemplates her parents' life as immigrants in the Netherlands and their tumultuous relationship.
