Love Song: The beautiful girl has gone

Ibrahim Abdi Hati

The beauty brown girl that made mad
When I remember her, I feel cry.
Brown she is and more beautiful
Than any creature on this planet.

The beauty brown has gone forever.
Whoever met her must have
Glanced at her.
Whoever married her must be lucky
And pleased.

The beautiful girl has gone
Forever.

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Marking May as the “Short Story Month,” Words Without Borders highlights some of its stellar past publications, the Dagestani-Russian novelist Alisa Ganieva’s bitterly comic “A Village Feast” among them.
Ilya Kaminsky’s informed and elegant preface to Kiss the Eyes of Peace, a new selection of Tomaž Šalamun’s poems from 1964-2014, is excerpted on today’s LitHub.
Raoul DeJong, in Jake Goldwasser’s translation, on the literary politics of Surinamese Netherlands, in the most recent issue of Words Without Borders.
The Spring 2024 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review features writing by Kwame Dawes and Géhanne-Amira Khalfallah.
Our congratulations to Fall Residency alumni Sebastian Barry and Mircea Cărtărescu, both of whom appear on this year's Dublin Literary Award shortlist.