Poetry
Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper
Featured
After Antonio Machado
You who say you are on the road:
There is no road, only
Your own footprints. Where you
Go is the only road, nothing else.
Chant of Immediate Threats
Into geology of exile, home implodes. / The ground, incorrigible. / Ether shifting in its vicissitudes of letting go. / Somewhere, the karst. / Out and frayed apart decants the silt from another era. / I cannot keep you safe.
Dear Reader
I am not Athena, but what has unzipped and stepped
out of the coat of her body, which now sags
on the floor. Let me grab you by the hand, lead you
to the stage, lift the coat, pinching its lapels
between my fingers. Let me invite you to slip
A Cybercafé in Mar del Plata
shade of García Lorca, what are you doing here,
hidden in the deepest cubicles? / and you, Perlongher?
here we are / looking at images
My Brother
Where is my brother? I am stunned,
starving, staring into the mirror
in the hopes of seeing a face other than mine
gaze back. Where is my brother?
In Memoriam, Louise Glück
On October 13th, 2023, unexpectedly, the world lost one of its greatest poets. Louise Glück, the most recent AGNI contributor to win the Nobel Prize, died just two weeks after a cancer diagnosis. Many fellow writers in Boston and beyond lost a dear friend. We’ve collected some of their reflections and appreciations here.
From the Archive
“The train whistles...”
Storm Over the Wasteland
Weathering Out
Prophecy
Every week, I concede a point
of inflection. Remember
when they used to say
karaoke? Now stars are shrinking
past the event horizon; the escape
speed of phonemes is astonishing.