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Vo Thi Nhu Mai [Australia / Vietnam]

  These three poems trace an arc of connection between Vietnam and Greece moving from distant, almost mythical exchange in "Silk". History dances through trade and imagination, to the deeply human story in "The Man Who Chose a Homeland", identity, love, and belonging transcend origin. The final poem, "We Rise in Meeting" turns gently toward the present, affirming a living connection formed by openness, trust, and shared becoming. Together, they reflect a journey from indirect encounter to chosen kinship, and finally, to a hopeful, conscious meeting of worlds.     Silk   no ship bore a Greek name into the mouths of Mekong tides and then silk arrived as soft as rumour   Funan glittered in foreign memory gems lifted like fragments of sunrise into distant hands   they never touched not truly only through roads and oceans, through spices and bird’s nests through wood painted with soft rain   a city is called Cattigara half-myth, half-map drawn in ink by tho...
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Michael Augustin [Germany]

    Attention Readers! In contrast to conventional poetry this poem contains no preservatives   In the fridge you can keep it up to three days in the ice compartment up to one week and in the deep freezer for up to a year   But it’s best to read it right away Then you already have one worry off your mind     How it Goes   Poems are doing considerably better and worse these days. They are clearly read by more or fewer people. Most passers-by don’t care about poems; teachers, editors and booksellers care even less. Publishers don’t care at all. Those who write poetry are allowed, but not obliged, although this is strongly recommended, to call themselves poets without being laughed at, as was common in the past, and are showered with prizes of all kinds, unless they are not. The young are old, the old are young, the dead are the most alive. Everything rhymes with Berlin. What doesn't rhyme with Berlin doesn't rhyme. Quite a bit rhymes that doesn't rhyme. ...

Federico Diaz-Granados [Colombia]

    The Rush of an Instant Time was right in its eagerness in settling in at its convenience and in having its rituals and hostilities.   Now I understand its lateness and stammers and its promptness for wise choices, that obstinance for fixing a few words in one extreme of infancy and some others in a corner of this hoarse street that so strongly resembles life, full of surprises and silences.   So forgive me for so many late hours. for summoning you during nights of resentment and omens for heaping together ruins and everyday problems in the same drawer between the exhaustion of the day and the stubborn music of silence.   Time was right in its rhythm and life in having its enthusiasm to stay here with all the rush of an instant.   So forgive me for my haste for not knowing the grammar and the words of a forgotten language for having lost notebooks, keys and the ol...

Kama Sywor Kamanda [Congo / Luxembourg]

                                  Crickets                  The deliverance of ancient times   Tonight I bury my legacies under mirages of the desert where the cricket, that eloquent speaker with vibrant songs in the sands and groves, piles up its winged eggs. I will soon see the truth in a silhouette of dust wave its fork of reminiscences. Anguished loves are taboo for me! The ideal is covered with a shroud of sorrows invisible to the profane! The seasons are delivered from time! The full moon in disarray over dunes is pale and bitter from being unable to influence the tides of sand. This is the great mystery that surprises us at an age when wings of dreams mingle with the roots of the soul devoid of memory. But while the strong winds are familiar to us, the sky in its fury ...

Demetra Ch. Christodoulou [Greece]

  Icarus   Sad, agitated, nearly illiterate, After high school a waiter luckily, He wears his obsessive, all-black hoody And throws himself into the cosmic mystery, In all this pandemonium of stars.   I can hear his confused steps. The deeper the night, the more they sound like The crawl of the baby I raised In so many demon-like flaps, In such a love panic, And then, a man already, he turned and saw What comets see on a blind flight Springing into chaos.   My loneliness, my rage, my stupidity, I don’t want the verses to pity them tonight But little by little light up one after the other The lights of the Saturday city. His friends to climb the rooftops Wave at him, whistle, Tell him “Fly, fly!” in an instance of betting, “There is a good god, the joyful Moon nests are sparkling. Who will not take you in their arms, Who will ever deny you a place…”   (Translation into English: Eleftheria Tsitsa)   For a Rare Name   It assured her she would not be al...

Hugo de Mendoza [Mexico]

  Metaphysics of Cows   I love the tranquility of cows their concentration as they chew grass.   I love their philosophical stains,    their religious eyes, I love their tireless taste for grazing in the memory or the metaphysics of Buddha.   I love cows when they meditate on a chess board,     but even more when they walk to the dimension of my existence and say:               " Wake up,             milk is served ”.       Cook and Insect (ultimate dialogue)      An extractor, forks, a dirty kitchen and all the filth of a country in ten sugar tablespoons. I can still perceive my blindness collapsed at the frontier. We have been together for so long -from the fire of the stove to the corner of the waste-, that this culinary operation griddle goes crazy over too much of our gazes.     ...