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Ocean Vuong, from “The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica”, Time Is a Mother

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Amy Hempel, Cloudland

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— The Carnivorous Lamb, Agustín Gómez-Arcos, tr. William Rodarmor

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“Fortune abandoned her at a young age, so she falls in love with fleeting moments, trusting they will shine long enough to keep her glow alive.”

— Noor Shirazie, Into the Wildfire: Battle Scars

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…you will go home and then you will find that home is not home anymore. Then you will really be in trouble. As long as you stay here, you can always think: One day I will go home.

– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

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Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod, Traci Brimhall

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“If my bones must age, I pray that they do so with you.”

— Noor Shirazie

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Thomas Dyer, The Folk-lore of Plants

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Walt Whitman, “Come Up from the Fields Father”, Leaves of Grass

[Text ID: “(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)”]

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Mitski for Pitchfork // Richard Siken for TinHouse

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ستنتهي الحرب، ويتصافح القادة، وتبقى تلك العجوز تنتظر ولدها الشهيد، وتلك الفتاة تنتظر زوجها الحبيب، وأولئك الأطفال ينتظرون والدهم البطل. لا أعلم من باع الوطن ولكنني رأيت من دفع الثمن.

The war will end, and leaders will shake hands, and the old lady will still wait for her martyred son, and that woman will wait for her beloved husband, and those children will wait for their heroic father. I don’t know who sold our homeland, but I have seen who paid the price.

- Mahmoud Darwish

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“How to un-want what the body has wanted, explain how the flesh in its wisdom was wrong?”

— Cecilia Woloch, from “Postcard Beginning With a Quote from Mark C., Avenue de l'Opéra,” Carpathia

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Ono no Komachi & Izumi Shikibu, tr. by Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

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Sai Assari, Dreamer’s Collection

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“I had gone back to being myself. But my self did not exist.”

— Christa Wolf, tr. by Jan van Heurck, from “Cassandra: A Novel & Four Essays,”

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“I had not known, before us, that every vein in my body was capable of carrying light…I had not really known I could be so much more than myself. I had not known another body could do this to mine.”

— Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy

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bell hooks, All About Love