Mike meets Pierre almost six weeks after moving in, after his daughter called and made him promise he’ll get out of his house.
Three Poems by Pablo Saborío
Perennial Plato talks about his hands, how good, so virtual, dreamed tools. He moves through 24 centuries as a rope carrying a wave. My chin rests on my palm imperceptibly seeking sensation; stubs of beard soon fated for the sink. There is a madness that never goes dry, is it age entering …
The First Time I Tried McDonald’s
At school and on the playground, children crowded around one another, laughing. I noticed their laughter. I heard it. The children were always laughing, even if the clouds were setting in above them.
The Aureliano Poems
Aureliano contends with what little he knows. Lists make the world into something graspable solitude careful intent fate These three things made up his armor His shining armor shone Do you remember the ice yes just like that in my shining armor too I can…
60th Anniversary Announcement
The first issue of the Columbia Journal was published in the fall of 1977 by the students of the Columbia University School of the Arts Graduate Writing Program. It was sixty-seven pages long and featured poetry and fiction, including works…
One Story by Yásnaya Elena A. Gil Translated from the Spanish
The land that we inhabit—transformed into territory—is culturally and materially inscribed by all of us who inhabit it. We read the earth, and a tree becomes a messianic staff, a river indicates a border, while a mountain is a sacred…
4 Poems by Farhanah Translated from the Indonesian
One Poem by Yoysef Kerler Translated from the Yiddish
One Poem by Du Ya, Translated from the Chinese
About the Author Du Ya was born in 1968 in Henan Province. Before becoming an editor and writer, she worked as a nurse for ten years. She is the author of The Wind Uses Its Bright Wings (1998), Selected Poems (2008), and Sunset and Dawn Light (2016),…
A Conversation with Chessy Normile
Madeleine Cravens, M.F.A. candidate in poetry, sat down with poet Chessy Normile on a stoop in Brooklyn to talk about humor, vulnerability, and revision. Normile’s debut collection, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party, was awarded the 2020 APR/Honickman First Book…
Notes from Underground
It is naïve to suggest that you cannot love someone to whom you wish to cause pain. If that were so, what a different world we would live in.
Next Time Won’t You Sing With Me
Tell it muffled, tell it crooked, whisper it into a thousand layers of hospital green cotton, bubble it up through a vat of Adriamycin. Or not. Maybe best not to tell it at all.