Words to Start

Words to Start: Wishbone by Richard Siken

You saved my life he says I owe you everything. You don’t, I say, you don’t owe me squat, let’s just get going, let’s just get gone,…

Spiegeloog EditorsJune 12, 2026

Spiegeloog 444: Salience Words to Start

Words to Start: A Person Protests to Fate by Jane Hirshfield

A person protests to fate: “The things you have caused me most to want are those that furthest elude me.” Fate nods. Fate is sympathetic.…

Spiegeloog EditorsApril 24, 2026

Spiegeloog 443: Challenge Words to Start

Words to Start: Autumn by Mikko Harvey

93,651 guinea pigs felt pain last year during scientific experiments. Noble pigs, we only wished to know you! To know ourselves through you, and perhaps…

Spiegeloog EditorsMarch 6, 2026

Spiegeloog 442: Character Words to Start

Words to Start: Rehearsal Notes by Len Verwey

Sorry, I assumed you were awake anyway. Let's try it without the heavy breathing toward the end of the scene in the garden. It distracts,…

Spiegeloog EditorsJanuary 23, 2026

Spiegeloog 441: Memory Words to Start

Words to Start: Nostos by Louise Glück

There was an apple tree in the yard — this would have been forty years ago — behind, only meadows. Drifts of crocus in the…

Spiegeloog EditorsNovember 28, 2025

Spiegeloog 440: Performance Words to Start

Words to Start: The Way the Light Reflects by Richard Siken

The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects, so what’s there to be faithful to? I am faithful to you, darling. I say it to the…

Spiegeloog EditorsOctober 17, 2025

Spiegeloog 439: Balance Words to Start

Words to Start: Unearthing by Mikko Harvey

At night sometimes I go to the pond which is a perfect circle and as soon as I arrive the gazelle is there too standing…

Spiegeloog EditorsJune 4, 2025

Spiegeloog 438: Chaos Words to Start

Words to Start: Parallel Echoes

I dream I am an ant trapped in a human body: My arms feel too long, and the bipedal mechanism eludes me. I search for…

Taymara TimckeApril 16, 2025

Spiegeloog 425: Vision Words to Start

Words to Start: The Haunting Words of a Would-Be Dictator

A couple of weeks ago, on my way to university, I encountered an old man on the tram who was asking for directions to Roeterseiland…

Laura SpringerMarch 21, 2023

Spiegeloog 424: Irrational Words to Start

Words to Start: Turkey-Syria Earthquake

For this issue, we would like to dedicate our Words to Start to one of the deadliest earthquakes of the last century and ways you…

Laura SpringerFebruary 15, 2023

Spiegeloog 423: Pride Words to Start

Words to Start: Straight People by Maya

This issue of the Spiegeloog is dedicated to Pride which automatically makes me think of the queer community. While looking for poems about pride, I…

Spiegeloog EditorsJanuary 11, 2023

Spiegeloog 422: Solace Words to Start

Words to Start: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Persepolis is an autobiographical series by Marjane Satrapi, depicting her childhood and adolescence in Iran and Austria, during and after the Islamic Revolution. The following…

Spiegeloog EditorsNovember 15, 2022

Spiegeloog 421: Reflections Words to Start

Words to Start: Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I…

Spiegeloog EditorsOctober 12, 2022

Spiegeloog 420: Taboo Words to Start

Words to Start: Salome by Carol Ann Duffy

I’d done it before (and doubtless I’ll do it again, sooner or later) woke up with a head on the pillow beside me – whose?…

Spiegeloog EditorsSeptember 7, 2022

Spiegeloog 419: Harmony Words to Start

Words to Start: ‘.’ by Berenike Simon

Smiling is not the mark of happy wonders, not when for each smile I had to pay. So, with every suckled failure, I throw these…

Berenike SimonMay 9, 2022

Spiegeloog 418: Time Words to Start

Words to Start: Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me And I shall spend…

Spiegeloog EditorsMarch 30, 2022

Spiegeloog 416: Language Words to Start

Words to Start: A Language by Susan Stewart

I had heard the story before about the two prisoners, alone in the same cell, and one gives the other lessons in a language. Day…

Spiegeloog EditorsJanuary 10, 2022

Spiegeloog 415: Home Words to Start

Words to Start: from Wilfred Owen

Letter of War Poet and Officer Wilfred Owen to His Mother Dearest Mother, I will call the place from which I’m now writing “The…

Spiegeloog EditorsNovember 15, 2021

Spiegeloog 414: Rise Words to Start

Words to Start: Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll…

Spiegeloog EditorsOctober 11, 2021

Spiegeloog 413: Nature Words to Start

Words to Start: Friends by Abbie Farwell Brown

How good to lie a little while And look up through the tree! The Sky is like a kind big smile Bent sweetly over me.…

Spiegeloog EditorsSeptember 6, 2021

Spiegeloog 412: Happiness Words to Start

Words to Start: Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at…

Spiegeloog EditorsMay 17, 2021