AGNI

A Friday Desdemona Othello is holding a dime-store mirror up over their heads, so she can see herself as he plunges. —Look, dear. Sweeting. Look. It is full-length. He holds it up with one arm, the other under and…

I’m not a star-fucker. I’m a girl who makes him pay attention. I’m white and large-thighed. I’m new passion. I’m cougar-eyed just like him. I’m desperate for peace. I’m a lover, not a warrior. I’m courageous. I’m rain.

~from "A Friday Desdemona"
by Margo Berdeshevsky
AGNI Online

Positive Because in those days there were no words for such things I took handfuls of vitamins and slept with a trumpet flower under my pillow, I ate at the Kiev on Second Avenue at four every morning:…

Because in those days there were no words
for such things I took handfuls of vitamins and slept
with a trumpet flower under my pillow

~from "Positive"
by Rynn Williams
AGNI Online

A Story 1 Pre-Raphaelite hair, a little black dress and fuck-me pumps, my poems drawing actors, dancers, painters to my Village digs, books, opera tickets, the Met. Someone else is living the life I thought…

When I whistle, a white horse
in Central Park lifts its head, wickering.
I lie down like Nebucadnezzer to graze.
My lips kissing a subway grate
five hundred miles away, years too late,
a forelock whisks my cheek.

~from "A Story"
by Melissa Green
AGNI Online

Sea State “Let’s take to the high seas,” he says. “We’ll float for a bit and see where we land.” He bangs his fist on the hull. “Big, right? Like I said. She can take a beating.” The galley stinks of sour…

The galley stinks of sour milk. She has to shoulder the cabin door to budge it. The bed is lumpy. She has a strong sense that someone died here.

~from "Sea State"
by Niall McArdle
AGNI Online

Kindness Evening light the colour of olive oil poured from a high jug: streaming over the back of the burnished cricket riding its bowing grass stem; glossing the spade with its broken handle, leaning on the…

Light is light, it is not kindness,
but if kindness had a colour, perhaps
it would be this—yes, you turn away
impatiently, yet it’s you who cannot
bear to crush a snail

~from "Kindness"
by Tim Upperton
AGNI Online

Money, Deadlines, and Water On the occasion of the paperback release of her new novel, Conscience, Alice Mattison writes about finding possibilities for story—“an engine made of trouble”—at a boat launch in the Adirondacks.…

A novel is propelled by an engine made of trouble, and it can be hard to think up enough trouble to keep the wheels turning so that one thing leads to another, and another.

~from "Money, Deadlines, and Water"
by Alice Mattison
AGNI Online

Soul In the book of optical illusions first you see the ancient one butting heads with the rabbit then you see the young woman carrying the duck. The scintillating black dots in white circles seen from…

In the book of optical illusions
first you see the ancient one
butting heads with the rabbit
then you see the young woman
carrying the duck.

~from "Soul"
by Rebekah Remington
AGNI Online

The Wild Child In those years when I bounded about on all fours, and on my elbows fled those I feared; when in those lucent days I scaled trees fast as a cat and sailed the treetops as the squirrels do, spreading…

This is how I spend my days: sitting in a chair, boots on, stays on, hair in pins, plying my needle as a bee plies the blossom: in and out, in and out. Wind me up and I mutter all the Holy Holies you wish.

~from "The Wild Child"
by Rikki Ducornet
AGNI 62

Ex Libris Here is the fossil as a perfume. Here is a bone picked clean and whittled into a tiny tall ship. Here are magicians teaching secrets to contortionists. Here is colored glass on fire. Here is love…

Here is the fossil as a perfume. Here is a bone
picked clean and whittled into a tiny tall ship.
Here are magicians teaching secrets
to contortionists. Here is colored glass on fire.

~from "Ex Libris"
by Megan Harlan
AGNI Online

On the Train By some oversight there are still mostly fields between Bologna and Venice, intimately familiar to me after the eight years I spent translating Italian sonnets about farm implements and irrigation…

"Finally, I have become indifferent to nostalgia—that primary emotion of my first forty years for which George Michael’s 'Careless Whisper' and Sade’s 'Is It a Crime' were like anthems."

🔥NEW🔥 at AGNI Online: "On the Train" by Taije Silverman.

October October rolls in the grass spilling apples from its lips Hands riding in automobiles pull at the sky A lawyer wakes up watches a woman walking across her back lawn Someone drifts to a kitchen faucet…

October rolls in the grass
spilling apples
from its lips

Hands riding in automobiles
pull at the sky

A lawyer wakes up
watches a woman walking
across her back lawn

Someone drifts to a kitchen faucet
bumps against spoons

~from "October"
by Alan Britt
AGNI 3

Rosy-Fingered Whatever Few things are as convincing as the Greek landscape when Dörpfeld explains it in the 1900 translation of The Odyssey. November—blood month—and dawn sprawling over its doily of cumulae like a lover…

Amazed as windows, our eyes the wine-blue of water
with nothing under it, it’s all we can do to keep loving you,
rosy-fingered whatever, as we might an ice cube
bumper-carring on a scarred griddle iron.

~from "Rosy-Fingered Whatever"
by Chad Davidson
AGNI Online

Running My Mouth sweet honey pink, down the side of his neck is what I do in the car. This is what I do with his racquet: unzip the cover, test the spring, push my skirt up my thigh with the metal handle. It has to…

sweet honey pink, down the side of his neck is what I do in the car. This is what I do with his racquet: unzip the cover, test the spring, push my skirt up my thigh with the metal handle.

~from "Running My Mouth"
by Sara McKinnon
AGNI Online

In Defense of Los Angeles The daily shock of the almost death persists too long in memory. A near automobile accident, a step back from the crumbling ledge of the odd cliff. The news will be there to inform you if I do not…

The daily shock of the almost death
persists too long in memory.
A near automobile accident, a step
back from the crumbling ledge of the odd cliff.

~from "In Defense of Los Angeles"
by Eachan Holloway
AGNI Online

Cécé's Cell Phone I felt Fénelon’s hands on my shoulder and pushed him away violently. He had traces of tears on his sunken cheeks from lamenting his lost virility. He was in a bad way. I took all his money; I left…

Read "Cécé's Cell Phone" here!
buff.ly/7n6Jj2w

Transnational Series: Emmelie Prophète + Aidan Rooney with Enzo Silon Surin The Transnational Series hosts Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney to discuss and celebrate the release of Cécé with Enzo Silon Surin.

RSVP to the event here!
buff.ly/YVcSCIH

TONIGHT! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

Kiss a Robber Two rows of footprints lead to the door. This means her husband is not alone. Pine needles have fallen into the prints. This is a type of clock: maybe three needles fall per hour. Ella walks in the…

Two rows of footprints lead to the door. This means her husband is not alone. Pine needles have fallen into the prints. This is a type of clock: maybe three needles fall per hour.

~from "Kiss a Robber"
by Magdalena Zyzak
AGNI 78

When You Ask Again From the dunes Penikese seems to drift on the horizon. Its dot of barracks empty, barns and sheepfold shut. Beach-plums by the bath-house drop. Split in rippling heat. Collapse. The island hasn’t…

Beach-plums by the bath-house drop.
Split in rippling heat. Collapse.
The island hasn’t seen a sheep
or a thief in a century.

~from "When You Ask Again"
by Miriam O’Neal
AGNI 50

Elegy for a Fabulous World In my dreams their house always appears as if separated from the rest of the universe, with no surroundings, and I, equally remote from any connection to the present or future, standing on the front…

It is in that moment of waiting for the opening of the door that the house takes shape, a promised gift in a Christmas package wrapped in colorful glittering ribbons—the kind of gift I never received as a child.

~from "Elegy for a Fabulous World"
by Alta Ifland
AGNI 66

Cécé's Cell Phone I felt Fénelon’s hands on my shoulder and pushed him away violently. He had traces of tears on his sunken cheeks from lamenting his lost virility. He was in a bad way. I took all his money; I left…

Read "Cécé's Cell Phone" here!
buff.ly/7n6Jj2w

Transnational Series: Emmelie Prophète + Aidan Rooney with Enzo Silon Surin The Transnational Series hosts Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney to discuss and celebrate the release of Cécé with Enzo Silon Surin.

RSVP to the event here!
buff.ly/YVcSCIH

1 WEEK FROM TODAY! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

Five Serrated Dreams I. The serial-killer abstract-expressionist meets me on top of a steep, snow-covered mountain. It is all arranged. The killer’s method involves throwing his victims off the tops of mountains into…

The serial-killer abstract-expressionist meets me on top of a steep, snow-covered mountain. It is all arranged.

~from "Five Serrated Dreams"
by Emily Mitchell
AGNI Online

12 Lines After Leadbelly Moaning is the minute between dusk and dark, the first stars, barely a breeze, a dead armadillo drying by the road, the day’s cotton picked, a blood-blistered finger, a blind man led across town by…

Moaning is the minute
between dusk and dark, the first stars,
barely a breeze, a dead
armadillo drying by the road

~from "12 Lines After Leadbelly"
by Jason Labbe
AGNI Online

Coogee to Bronte Walk My favorite translation of coogee, which is said to have come from the Bidigal word koo-jah, is the smell of seaweed drying. There are other Aboriginal translations, too, mainly about smell or…

From AGNI Online

"Coogee to Bronte Walk"
by Judy Rowley

My favorite translation of coogee, which is said to have come from the Bidigal word koo-jah, is the smell of seaweed drying.

Cécé's Cell Phone I felt Fénelon’s hands on my shoulder and pushed him away violently. He had traces of tears on his sunken cheeks from lamenting his lost virility. He was in a bad way. I took all his money; I left…

Read "Cécé's Cell Phone" here!
buff.ly/7n6Jj2w

Transnational Series: Emmelie Prophète + Aidan Rooney with Enzo Silon Surin The Transnational Series hosts Emmelie Prophète and Aidan Rooney to discuss and celebrate the release of Cécé with Enzo Silon Surin.

RSVP to the event here!
buff.ly/YVcSCIH

2 WEEKS FROM TODAY! Author Emmelie Prophète and translator @aidanrooney.bsky.social will discuss and honor the release of Cécé in the Transnational Literature Series at @brooklinebooksmith.bsky.social 🔥 An excerpt from the novel, "Cécé's Cell Phone," appeared in AGNI 96!

Premonition Two lovers talking on the phone, at night, ear pressed to the receiver pressed to ear for the half whispering voices that are clearer for being quiet, even more intimate somehow for being far away.…

Two lovers talking on the phone, at night,
ear pressed to the receiver pressed to ear

for the half whispering voices that are clearer
for being quiet, even more intimate

somehow for being far away.

~from "Premonition"
by Alan Shapiro
AGNI 57