Poetry
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Writing Prompt for April: Special Poetry Month Edition 2026
by Grace Dignazio
It’s hard to believe it’s already spring. The season promises growth and rebirth, yet arrives in the midst of a particularly devastating historical moment, and that sense of renewal feels almost impossible to access against a backdrop of atrocities and the erosion of democracy unfolding on an international stage. As artists and writers, we are often tasked with registering what resists language. Lately, I’ve found that responsibility especially difficult, and for the past few weeks, writing itself has felt out of reach. And yet, here we are—National Poetry Month—perhaps an opportunity to return to practice as a way of staying with this moment.
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Dialogue Between Authors and Translators: an interview with Peruvian poet Roxana Crisólogo and translator Kim Jensen
by LIT Translation Editor John P. Apruzzese
Noise, in poetry, is rarely only noise. It is the residue of migration, the pressure of history, the friction between languages that refuse to settle into a single meaning. In this LIT Global Voices conversation, Peruvian–Finnish poet Roxana Crisólogo and United States poet and translator Kim Jensen meet in that charged space where poetry, politics, and translation converge, not as separate practices, but as forms of attention. We were honored to publish Jensen’s translations of Crisólogo’s poems from her collection Kauneus (Beauty) in LIT 41 (Fall 2025).
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At the Wedding of My Transformation
art by Cynthia Yachtman
by Cassandra Whitaker
bride—the moon— moonlit calls for the wolf—-unhinged
swinging on a door made of borrowed light
Do I go through or do I remain closed?
Do I say yes yes or do I know myself?
to sunlight— I turn regrow my power
borrowed joy to change the surface of ache
into a wish catcher a deep pool of want
the bride understands the wolf appears as she
unlearns her old name offers to be filled
the wolf appears it matters little
where she places danger I am returning
to fill emptiness to be full of love
the bride—the moon— bereft of ocean’s ocean—time
the wolf’s teeth—age worn forgotten almost
by the wanting wolf inside the bride’s heart
waiting for the moon recovering from want
I was once nothing echoing night sounds
in an emptiness I understood to be night
I understood it I went into myself
love changes a name into a new sound
once I was the moon now—the wolf’s question
tuned to light’s frequency am I alone? -
Picture of My Dad in an Aircraft Carrier
photo by Kieth Dodson
by Patricia Aya Williams
December 1970
Dad at a desk turning to face
the camera, left hand on the keys
of a typewriter, right hand resting
on an open drawer, white pencil
lifted lightly, ready to erase
the mistake he’s just made—
one that I can’t see—on the paper
poised in the platen, the clatter
of type his quick fingers command
momentarily stalled.
The carrier’s walls—color of dirty
dishwater, hospital grunge, -
4, 7, 8 (X)
by Jan Clausen
Arrow and bow
You get my drift
No bucket list
I’ll just kick itPurple pansies next to Frick
Bloom in geometric beds
Perky periodontist
Scrapes expensively my teeth
Rather than hamper defeat
People peer at screens, mirrors
Snooze as losses mount, bleed outA rat’s ass, he thinks, chicks don’t give
Regarding the pleasure of men
Dogwoods appear to console us
For magnolias’ departure
Art is not a matter of will
I’m a cunning emergency
Take the Q train, -
Droste Effect
art by Helen Hofling
by Samuel Piccone
Someone I love tells me the world is a house
I’m always running into by running from,
that flowers begin staling the momentthey flower, so enough already with the flowers.
A flower is a body, and a body is also a container
for every atom it will never hold—imagine filling a room with so many remainders.
Dear God, enough already. With running. With oblivion
and flowers. Someone I love tells meno one will if I don’t start closing my mouth
