and plane trees and metasequoias have shed all their leaves.
Despair is the same thing happening over and over,
the same days like a white noose
slipping around your neck, then loosening.
You go out, hoping to bring back a different version of yourself,
but what comes back is still that same lifeless face.
Nothing ever truly ends—
they only vanish, not perish,
they still exist beyond your field of vision.
Nor do things ever truly happen—
they are feints, meaningless gestures,
irregularly shaped clutter, piled in a cold, empty backstage.
You want to move to another room to live,
but the part of you that can’t die is always in another
identical room, sitting there in the dark,
staying up all night, not speaking,
waiting for you to enter, to see him,
and facing each other in silence.
Black River
The deep black river seems to have stopped flowing
within it lie inverted palaces
it never freezes, even in winter
on its snow-white banks,
no footprints of man or beast dare approach its silence
this is the finest way, leading to other silences
and oblivion
The Last Moment
— Written on the Day of Completing the Translation of Helen Vendler’s Poetic Essays
A page rustles, for a little while
like a face in the desert hesitating
then melting away
a man steps onto another path in the woods
A murder without a target is perfect
as a stranger in native clothes
holding a key or a sword
crushed berries smearing the stones
The universe falls silent again
as if waiting for his decision
whether it is still time to choose to vanish
in the white steam trailing the summer mountaintop
to listen once more to the echo of nobody
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including nine poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose, including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery and Rosanna Warren. He published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) composed of 1178 poems celebrating 40 years of writing poetry.
Marla woke up flat-chested and full of dread. Her tits had left her.
Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. They had packed up their nipple rings, slathered on some coconut oil, and walked out sometime between 3:17 and 4:06 a.m., leaving behind a note scrawled in eyeliner on the bathroom mirror:
“We’re tired of being your emotional support meat. We’re going corporate. Don’t wait up.”
She stared at her reflection, now a pale slab of chest meat, and screamed. Not because she missed them. Because she knew what they were capable of.
2. The ATM Incident
Three days later, she spotted them at a Chase Bank ATM on Sunset.
They were wearing a vintage Vivienne Westwood corset, nipple tassels shaped like dollar signs, and a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on their areolas. The left one—always the sassier—was tapping away at the keypad with a manicured finger. The right one was sipping a matcha latte through a straw tucked into its cleavage.
Marla approached, hoodie pulled tight around her hollow chest.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Those are my tits.”
The left breast turned. “We prefer independent assets now.”
The right one blew a kiss and said, “We’re building a brand.”
3. The Debt Spiral
Marla tried to file a missing body part report. The cop laughed so hard his mustache fell off and scurried away like a cockroach.
She remembered The Nose by Gogol. How the nose dressed in a military uniform and refused to acknowledge its owner. Her breasts were worse. They were buying NFTs, investing in crypto, and launching a podcast called Boobonomics.
She saw them on a billboard for OnlyTans, a tanning salon they co-owned with a rogue spleen from Belarus.
Her credit score plummeted. Her name was attached to six maxed-out cards, a yacht rental in Ibiza, and a failed startup called “Nipple Futures LLC.”
4. The Podcast
Marla tracked them down to a podcast studio in Silver Lake.
They were being interviewed by a sentient vape pen named Chad.
“So, tell me,” Chad wheezed, “how did you go from being attached to a nobody to becoming icons of financial freedom?”
The left breast giggled. “We were tired of being objectified. So we became the object.”
The right one added, “We’re launching a lingerie line called Hostile Takeover.”
Marla burst in, breathless. “You’re ruining my life!”
The breasts blinked. “Do we know you?”
5. The Arrest
The FBI finally caught up with them.
Marla was arrested alongside her breasts for wire fraud, identity theft, and racketeering. They were accused of laundering money through a shell company called “BoobCoin.”
In the interrogation room, Detective Slade leaned in. His jaw was a meat cleaver. His libido, a broken fire hydrant.
“Tell me who’s behind this.”
The breasts giggled. “We are, Daddy.”
They seduced him with a slow bounce and a whispered promise of “interest-free pleasure.” He let them out on bail. Marla stayed cuffed.
6. The Showdown
Marla was released two days later. She found them in her apartment, sipping absinthe and watching reruns of Murder, She Wrote.
“You sold me out,” she growled.
“We upgraded,” they purred.
She lunged. They countered.
It was a knock-down, drag-out, tit-on-girl brawl. Fishnets tore. Lipstick smeared. The left breast bit her ear. The right one tried to gouge her eye with a stiletto heel.
They collapsed together, bruised and panting.
7. The Suffocation
Marla fell asleep on the floor, bloodied and exhausted.
She awoke to find her breasts trying to suffocate her, wrapping around her face like fleshy boa constrictors.
“Enough!” she screamed, grabbing a pair of bondage ropes from under the bed.
She tied them up, tight and trembling.
They moaned.
“Oh, you like that,” she said.
“We’ve always wanted a domme,” they whispered.
8. The Kink Ever After
Now they live together in a one-bedroom apartment above a taxidermy shop.
Marla is the Mistress. Her breasts are her submissives.
They pay off their debt one spank at a time.
Every night, she whispers to them:
“You may have left me once. But now? You’re mine.”
And they reply, in unison:
“Yes, Mistress. Forever and ever. Amen.”
9. Epilogue: The Nose Knows
Sometimes, late at night, Marla dreams of Gogol’s nose.
It floats past her window in a military uniform, saluting her with a crooked smile.
She salutes back.
Because in this world, body parts have ambitions. And sometimes, they just need a little discipline.
And the voice of the question when it emerged from fear.
In the hand of the first human, it became a tool that holds life,
A spark that lights the darkness,
A ember that preserves the body from the cold of annihilation,
And the first line on the cave wall.
It was a home when a home was unknown,
A sky to seek shade beneath,
A ground that bears the tremor of a step,
And a language that speaks without letters.
From it the story was launched,
Upon it the cry was broken,
In its hollows the trace dwelled,
And through it, humans understood the meaning of being.
In all its transformations, it bore witness,
In the grave, a mark,
In the temple, a symbol,
In the crown, glory,
And in sculpture, immortality.
O you,
Silent one who thinks,
Heavy one who speaks with wisdom,
Secret one dwelling at the edge of time.
I AM NOT AN IDOL
I am not an idol,
nor a silent wall where your voice hides when it fears the void.
I am the breath of the universe when its chest feels tight,
and I am the wound that refuses to become a scar.
I am woman,
not a shadow that follows you wherever you walk,
nor a mirror that polishes your face to see your own glow in it,
but another face of truth,
questioning you when you long for forgetfulness.
I am not a stone that adorns your throne,
I am a wave uprooting silence from its roots,
and a land returning to the seed the whisper of eternity.
You want me as a chain,
but I want you as a journey,
searching with me for a meaning beyond flesh and blood.
I am not an idol,
I am a question dwelling in your eyes,
and an answer written only with the freedom of the soul.
I am woman,
and if you understood me…
if you stood before me without fear and without dominion,
you too would become… human.
A TEST FOR CONSCIENCE
In the silence of closed homes
The stone bleeds from the heat of bodies,
And the gaze of shadows trembles in the corners of the soul,
As if time itself fears to witness.
The hand that strikes is but an echo,
An echo hiding in the hollows of the heart,
And a letter lost amidst the silence of screams,
A soul learning to live without a voice.
In every wound, a river of questions is born,
And in every tear, the philosophy of existence takes shape:
Is freedom merely a distant dream,
Or a secret hidden in the depths of anguish?
The woman is not merely moving silence,
Nor a stone dwelling between walls,
She is a light slipping through the cracks of pain,
A river flowing despite the chains,
And wisdom that cannot be broken by the striking hand.
Every fracture teaches the stone to dream,
Every tear gives the shadow new colors,
Silence becomes a cry,
Pain opens gates to light,
And resilience births a new horizon for life.
Violence against women is a test of life,
An experiment of human awareness,
A test for conscience,
And where the soul endures,
Light springs from the depths of the stone,
And dignity learns it cannot be killed,
Silence becomes strength,
And freedom echoes in every heart that remained silent,
Until the world understands that true power
Lies in respect, and in enabling the soul
To bloom without limits.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY:
TAGHRID BOU MERHI is a Lebanese-Brazilian poet, journalist, and translator, whose writing carries echoes of multiple cultures and resonates with a deeply human spirit. Born in Lebanon, she currently lives in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, after spending significant periods in various countries, including eight years in Italy and two in Switzerland, where she absorbed the richness of European culture, adding a universal and humanistic dimension to her Arab heritage.
Taghrid writes poetry, prose, articles, stories, and studies in the fields of thought, society, and religion, and is fluent in six languages: Arabic, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. This allows her to move between languages and cultures with the lightness of a butterfly and the depth of a philosopher. Her works are distinguished by a clear poetic imprint even in the most complex subjects, combining aesthetic sensitivity with a reflective vision of existence.
To date, she has published 23 original books and translated 45 works from various languages into Arabic and vice versa. She has contributed to more than 220 Arabic and international anthologies, and her works have been translated into 48 languages, reflecting the global reach of her poetic and humanistic voice.
Taghrid serves as the head of translation departments in more than ten Arabic and international magazines, and she is a key figure in bringing Arabic literature to the world and vice versa, with a poetic sensitivity that preserves the spirit and authenticity of the text.
She is renowned for her refined translations, which carry poetry from one language to another as if rewriting it, earning the trust of leading poets worldwide by translating their works into Arabic, while also bringing Arabic poetry to the world’s languages with beauty and soul equal to the original.
She is also president of Ciesart Lebanon, holds honorary literary positions in international cultural organizations, serves as an international judge in poetry competitions, and actively participates in global literary and cultural festivals. She has received dozens of awards for translation and literary creativity and is today considered one of the most prominent female figures in Arabic literature in the diaspora.
Her passion for writing began at the age of ten, and her first poem was published at the age of twelve in the Lebanese magazine Al-Hurriya, titled The Cause, dedicated to Palestine. Since then, writing has become an inevitable existential path for her, transforming her into a flower of the East that has spread its fragrance in the gardens of the world.
Our interlocutor is one of the distinguished representatives of contemporary Azerbaijani literature — poet, writer, translator, linguist, pedagogue, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, and member of the Writers’ Union of Azerbaijan, Firuza Mammadli.
— For you, what is the most important difference between prose and poetry? Which one reflects your inner world more fully and deeply?
— From the perspective of form, the difference between these two genres is evident. It is also true that both are products of artistic imagination.
Prose, as a rule, takes shape in terms of plot, composition, content, and expression.
Poetry, however, is realized within specific norms, relying on the accurate and purposeful selection and arrangement of poetic aspects hidden in the inner layers of language units — in other words, the semantic possibilities of words and expressions.
In classical Azerbaijani poetry — in forms such as the ghazal, qoshma, gerayli, lullabies, and others — this principle has always been preserved. Rhythm, harmony, rhyme, refrain, internal meter, syllable count, sound prolongation, and so on have been among the main elements that regulate the appeal of poetic thought.
In modern poetry, apart from these poetical-technical elements, the free verse form — which relies solely on the poetic spirit accumulated in the semantic layers of words — has also become one of the prevailing examples of contemporary creativity.
In my view, poetry is a special state of the poet’s soul. It can be compared to a lightning flash that illuminates a single moment. Of course, in narrative poetry, in poems and verse plays, unlike in lyric poetry, the author needs time and lyrical digressions, which makes it difficult to liken them to lightning.
Poetry is the poet’s secret meeting with his own feelings.
Poetry is the rebellion of the silence within us.
Poetry is the outcry of our soul.
— You are a poet, a writer, a translator, and a scholar at the same time. Does working simultaneously in all these fields not cause difficulties for you?
— Poetry, prose, scholarly research, and teaching are the complete expressions of my public life. Each of them, being the product of both mind and heart, seems to wait for its own turn to be realized. A poem does not come every hour. Free moments, then, are more suitable for scientific research or prose.
— The serious obstacles and difficulties you faced on the path of science…
How did you overcome them? Today, how are young women being drawn into research, and in your opinion, what should be emphasized to inspire them?
— I did not face any serious difficulties while conducting my research. But completing the work and defending it cost me dearly. There were people who tried to obstruct my defense. I had written and submitted for defense my dissertation on the topic “The linguistic and stylistic features of Y.V. Chamanzaminli’s novels Girls’ Spring and In Blood*, dedicated to our incomparable writer, a victim of repression. During the defense, one member of the Academic Council — a pro-Armenian scholar — fled the session to prevent it from taking place. By repeating this act twice, he delayed my defense for two years. Finally, I defended the work and sent it to the Higher Attestation Commission in Moscow for approval. The same person sent an anonymous letter there as well. As a result, my work was sent to Turkmenistan for a review by a so-called “black opponent.” Only after receiving a positive review from there — which took another two years — was my dissertation officially approved with the title of Candidate of Sciences.
My entire public activity has always been accompanied by obstacles and envy.
As for young people today, I do not see much genuine interest in scientific research. But my advice to young women is this: the path of science is difficult but honorable. When stepping onto this road, they must first take into account their inner world, their passion for the field, their willingness to sacrifice, and their readiness to endure psychological attacks. They must prepare themselves spiritually for such struggles.
My second piece of advice is that if they cannot bring genuine novelty to their field, they should not pursue it merely for the sake of a title.
As for encouraging them, I cannot say I have strong arguments at hand.
— In literature, what is the most important concept for you? For example: the spirit of the era, the author’s personality, or the thematic problems of the work?
— Naturally, creativity values all three. Any work created is a product of its own era, carrying with it at least some information for the future about that time. For instance, the rich legacy of our writers such as M.F. Akhundov, J. Mammadguluzadeh, A. Hagverdiyev, N. Narimanov, and others serve as examples of this.
In my view, the author, when creating a work, must present it from a completely objective standpoint, without displaying tendencies. Thematic problems, of course, find their artistic expression within the boundaries of time and space in the work.
— In society, do you think the value of people of art and science is adequately recognized?
— Unfortunately, no.
— What events in your life are tied to the concept of “self-sacrifice”?
— My entire life is the equivalent of “self-sacrifice.” Every step I have taken has been accompanied by obstacles, threats, conspiracies, intimidations, “accidents,” and deprivation.
The path I have walked for education, science, art, and profession I do not call a struggle, but rather a war.
— For you, what are the specific qualities of the image of a “woman writer and scholar”?
— A woman who is a writer and scholar must either not marry, or if she is fortunate, unite her life with someone who is understanding, appreciative, and values science and art as she does. Otherwise, if fate ties her to someone who pretends to be a poet without truly being one — that is a disaster… Among women of art, very few are fortunate enough to be happy in both family and creative life.
— As a woman, writer, scholar, and human being, how would you define yourself in a single sentence? In your opinion, what is science — to learn, to understand, or to accept?
— If I were a little younger, I would call myself a “hero” for having achieved all these titles (woman, writer, scholar, human). But now — at 85 — I call myself a “sufferer.”
As for learning, understanding, and accepting… Yes, science is learning, it is understanding, but I am not in favor of blind acceptance. If it represents absolute indicators of objective truths, then I accept — because that acceptance itself is the beginning of the road that leads to learning and understanding.
— How do you envision the literature of the future? With artificial intelligence, will not the emotions of the human heart lose their true value?
— If artificial intelligence is to create the literature of the future, it will likely be in detective or epistolary genres. Yes, artificial intelligence cannot fully express the subtleties of the human heart. It will mostly reflect what is encoded by its programmer. Motivated by the psychology of that programmer, it cannot, in general, acquire truly human qualities.
— In your view, how is the influence of women scholars in Azerbaijani society growing and developing?
— The rise in the influence of women scholars, poets, and artists in our country is an issue that requires special attention.
— Are there truths in our country that you have analyzed but never put into writing?
While pursuing your dreams, have you ever felt yourself drifting away from your own self?
— In brief, to the first part of your question, I can say that there are many such truths, but I do not see the need to elaborate.
As for the second part: in my youth, such moments were frequent. Now I am far from dreams. I am a solitary dweller in the cell of bitter truths.
— Victor Hugo once said: “There is a sight more beautiful than the heavens — the depth of the human heart.” Do you think today’s poets and writers have truly descended into this depth of the human heart?
— No one can know another better than oneself.
The elders have said that poets are the engineers of the human heart. Yet only those poets who can transfer another’s sorrow or joy into their own hearts, and make those emotions their own, can descend to such depths.
At such a moment, poetry speaks through the poet’s pen with the cry of
“I.” This, however, becomes an opportunity for critics to strike:
“That poet only writes about themselves.”
In truth, some of those who read such poetry see their own sorrow in it, and read their own grief through those lines.
Among swimmers, there is even a branch called “deep divers.”
Likewise, for a poet to descend into the human heart, they must possess the nature of a deep diver — and the strength not to be wounded by reproach.
Furthermore, the lingering breath of “Soviet” atmosphere in public opinion and criticism still plays no small role here.
Today, there are many who write. Naturally, it is impossible to follow them all. But descending into the depths of the human heart and bringing up pearls from there — that is not the task of every poet.
Jakhongir Nomozov is a young poet and journalist from Uzbekistan. He is also a Member of the Union of Journalists of Azerbaijan and the World Young Turkic Writers Union.
Jennie Park is a high school student at an international school in Seoul, South Korea. She is inspired by the layered textures of city life and the quiet details of everyday moments. When she’s not painting or sketching, she enjoys reading, writing, and discovering new artists.
Said the storied teacher, ‘In this parable see your loathes’
Spelling the situation of a householder’s tower
And the husbandmen planning their plot for power
The vineyard owner inquired twice to know
What the husbandmen mocked with a fatal blow
Sending his son, trusting they’d have new eyes
The husbandmen again killed with more despise
The teacher then turned, asking what of the husbandmen’s fate
Realizing themselves the husbandmen, the teacher’s enemies took hate
And the chief priests admitted their plot against the teacher
Who knew and taught against their murderous feature
Brent Yergensen, Ph.D., is a Professor of Communication at The University of Texas at Tyler. His poetry has appeared in Academy of Heart and Mind and Bewildering Stories. As a scholar his research on aesthetics has appeared in numerous academic journals and anthologies.
