A branch
Like a great wishbone
Hanging on a wire.

—Theodore Roethke

Poetry by Fredrick Smock, Todd Davis, Marvin Bell, and the poems of Taha Muhammad Ali as translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin.

Where

Poetry hides
somewhere
behind the night of words
behind the clouds of hearing,
across the dark of sight,
and beyond the duck of music,
hidden and revealed.
but where is it concealed?
and how could I
possibly know
when I—am barely able,
by the light of day,
to find my pencil?

— Taha Muhammad Ali