Poetry

After a beloved grandfather dies, long held secrets come into sharp focus. “Five Cent Secret,” by Court Castaños, explores the complexities of having both white privilege and Mexican roots. […]

In her most recent interview with The Nasiona, award-winning poet Doyali Islam shares what it means to be a cis-woman with vaginismus, how to overcome the struggles of being a poet, and the importance of celebrating her body. […]

In part three of this three-part series, we asked poetry presses about where poetry is headed. This article will give you insights into changes they’d like to see and ways this industry can be improved. […]

In part two of this three-part series, we asked poetry presses about the challenges that come with being a small press publisher. This article will give you insights into the barriers they face and how their struggles impact who, what, and how much they publish. […]

In part one of this three-part series, we asked independent presses about what it takes to craft and publish a poetry collection. Curious about the perfect length for a poem? How many poems should be in your collection? The barriers to getting your collection out into the world? Where the publication of poetry is headed? Then read on. […]

We take you into the world of a Burmese woman’s quest to piece together the fragments of her identity as Su Su Maung. We also learn about how that quest led her to found the Myanmar-based psychological consulting firm, Citta Consultancy. Citta helps empower the people of Myanmar with social and emotional intelligence so they can heal, transform, and grow to reach their fullest potential and contribute to the development of their country. […]

The poems in Carl Boon’s debut collection, PLACES & NAMES, coalesce two kinds of history—the factual and the imagined—to produce a kind of intimacy that is greater than either fact or imagination. It is this sense of intimacy that brings the poems to life. We encounter real places sometimes—places we see on maps and highway signs—but also places that exist only in the imagination. We encounter names that are both recognizable and almost—or barely—remembered at all: Robert E. Lee next to one of a thousand men named Jackson who went to fight in Vietnam; Jorge Luis Borges next to an unknown boy from Clarita, Oklahoma, who himself would become a poet someday; a man who wishes he were Rocky Marciano hammering the heavy bag in Northeast Ohio, hungry for more than beans or soup. And suddenly it becomes clear how intimately connected in this collection these places and names are as we range from Saigon to northern Iraq; Athens, Ohio, to Libya; Ankara to Pittsburgh; and a strange, sleepy place called Pomegranate Town where someone’s infant dozes in the back of a car on a seaside highway. The people who inhabit these places seem, in a sense, to become those places, inseparable from their geographies and histories, often unable to escape, bound by memory, nostalgia, and tradition. […]

In this new seasonal series, we highlight some badasses.
_Lido Pimienta
_Ana Tijoux
_Shadia Mansour
_Gogol Bordello
_LP
_Melissa Lozada-Oliva
_Jessie Reyez
_The Hamilton Mixtape: K’naan, Snow Tha Product, Riz MC (Riz Ahmed), and Residente […]

You don’t know Zakia? / She is in grave number forty over three, over there. / They put my name on her mud-formed stone and / when I went to see her on that rainy afternoon, my shoes became stuck in a soupy quick sand which pulled me into the city of the always awake (those who no longer yawn after a long day’s labor, or close their ears to dull the screeching sirens of the bombs) / Did you know that Zakia hid in the cavern on the edge of al-Qusoor hill during that summer when the refugees outgrew their stay? […]

sunshine bottles, changwon heat-lush and dry,
we leaned against nude cherry blossom trees,
boozed and bullshit late into afternoon.

Tom wanted to wrestle, just to see how it felt
to tangle with an american […]

*WINNER OF THE NASIONA NONFICTION POETRY PRIZE, 2019*

I hope you don’t look Asian
like me.
I don’t want anyone, boy or girl,
reducing you to some Oriental fetish.

You will never know
your grandparents on my side.
I hope you will never know the hunger
that comes with such loneliness. […]

With our literary contests, we look to identify and celebrate some of the best original, unpublished creative nonfiction and nonfiction poetry out there.

_The Nasiona Flash Creative Nonfiction Prize, 2019: Hannah Huff, “Finding Jean Palmer”

_The Nasiona Nonfiction Poetry Prize, 2019: Bunkong Tuon, “A Guide to Parenting” […]

Dances of naked women in a single file
(Only the darkness covers their nakedness)
Carrying on bare heads small earthenware pots
Smoked in rituals of the night around flaming logs
Singing for Ijogwu, the water goddess
Imbuing the air with tingling
Relics of the ancient dreams
Dawning on the hallows of the grove
Far sprung in the distant forest. […]

outside of richmond, virginia–full day’s / drive north of tampa. bulky old tv’s / and a lobby sharp with chlorine, the pool / absolutely alive with the ignorant / joy of children who know not cheap hotels, / only that there is water deep enough / to drown in, […]

 – Believe it or not, the ancient Chinese 5-Agent Principle accounts for us all.  1/ Water (born in a year ending in 2 or 3) -helps wood but hinders fire; helped by metal but hindered […]

A poetic language emerges out of the experience of radically unfamiliar things. These poems capture the first voyage to a new world and reflect aspects of the traveler’s personality, his obsessiveness, and his devoutness and […]

We couldn’t be more excited to announce The Nasiona‘s 2019 Pushcart Prize nominees. We are honored to call our magazine the home to such inspiring work and talent. Congratulations to the following writers. We wish them […]

Is it a crime that I liked you for the collapsing breadth of your lips? I keep wondering if my life would have been different had I arrived at the party ten minutes later or […]

I’ve drank in hangers built to maintain the airplanes my grandfather operated on, under the eye of a traffic control tower that’s quiet now in the after-effects of all those solvents. Of course the suds […]

Tyehimba Jess is the 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry. His book, Olio, is a magnificently engineered collection of poems that explore black voices in the decades from Civil War times to the start of World […]

Slicing tuna skins pickling eyes in ouzo– comb of Kalamata olives; cubes of feta resembled plastic dice without any spots. The girl from Patitiri carried buckets of water on the back of a mule through […]

In a red state like Missouri, their hero columbised this land but for us, indigenous emigrants of burnt sage and blown prayers, a shivering flame in the stomach and Dr. Silver Wolf’s drums outside the […]

First came the scrappers, Slicing the drywall muscle for Detroit gold. Dissection of the vein, red conductors. They gutted the city, Broke her teeth, Boarded up her eyes. Then came the scavengers, looking to make […]

During his years in New Orleans Longstreet pursued several commercial ventures including the sale of insurance and membership in the city’s cotton brokerage, either of which, before the war, might have brought him a comfortable […]

East Canton, Ohio My grandmother’s house remains gray, remains past what might be recalled of it. A boy and a girl play Yahtzee! in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, and from the car I […]

Her Pomeranian shot back and forth like the white lines cut out on the coffee table as she tucked bleached hair behind her ear and snorted from the rolled-up bill. She stripped at Blush, the […]

Born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, JOHN Z. GUZLOWSKI came to the United States with his family as a displaced person in 1951. His parents had been Polish slave laborers in […]