From the Current Issue

Coral

Not without tenderness
did Perseus place
the Gorgon’s head
within the water, cover it
with seaweed and then wash

his hands of blood.
I guess the urgency
was gone—Andromeda’s chains
lay slack against the cliff
while the ocean grew

its inner life, a fragile city
without the growing pains
of graffiti—Amor Perdita,
Lilya 4-eva, and all that.
Someone’s bound

to know this place, where
the hurry of myth leaves us,
lets us smart from received blows,
charitable sun, all stony clarification

of an otherwise chaotic blue.

-- ARIANA KELLY

MARE NOSTRUM is an annual anthology of work inspired by the presence and legacy of the Mediterranean basin in language, art, civilization, and culture. We love pyramids, psalms, and Pythagorean theorems. We believe in vino, veritas. We live to travel, and admire travelers of all means and persuasions, especially those who take good notes.

We seek writing that lives in several worlds nimbly, lucidly, that explores and revitalizes ancient and contemporary history and myth.

We publish poems, translations, travelogue, and tales, tall & short, along with critical essays and reviews. We invite original and innovative work informed by the traveling life, tempered by the climate, currents and appetites of that vital middle sea—our sea, and yours, for a song.