For a collection steeped in drowning, Wilson continuously keeps readers afloat, buoyed by the promise and ever-present force of a mother’s love.
Poetry
Motherhood and Mental Illness: On Blue by Erin Wilson
Answer Yes Or No by Khairi Hamdan
translated from the Bulgarian by Katerina Stoykova
Answer the call of the flute—
the lost impulse of the absent poets,
the incomplete painting, the unrained cloud,
the prophecy of an upcoming confession—
From Decarceration by Charline Lambert
Translated from the French by John Taylor
Before grasping, taking
the pulse,
consider the litigation
Montale and Martins
Translated by Richard Price
Haul your paper ships up the scorched shore
and then sleep, little-boy captain –
may you never hear the evil spirits
sailing now in flocks.
2022 Micro-Chapbook Poetry Contest Results!
Congratulations to all our participants in the 2022 MAYDAY Micro-Chapbook contest!
Three Ai Poems
by Chandra Livia Candiani
Translated from the Italian by Elisabetta Taboga and Roy Duffield
Look mum it’s Ai
the number that escaped
the last of your sums, the figure
that doesn’t add up.
Standing at the Empty Mouth
by Abboud Aljabiri,
translated from the Arabic by Muntather Alsawad and Jeffrey Clapp
He was as calm as his family wanted,
managing a laugh each day of his life
and washing the traces away
with soap and water
drink yrself whole or corpse reviver #2
by nat raum
dry county: what hydrates more than
water? / whatever it is / will it bring back
feeling in your limbs / will it stay in your
stomach during the august photoshoot you
showed up to woefully hungover?
Aging, and Outside Again, and For Quite a While Laughing
by Steven Ostrowski
This morning he’d breathed
the death before death
that wakes us
Before Snow From a Blue Room
by Mary Moore
but it was only thought snow, and nothing
when it began, a thingless veil, a reign
of molecules, so we could overlook
the beauties and hazards of being
burdened and cold.
