Category: Poetry

by Noelle McManus For Francesca Woodman A conversation with my mother aboutpsychiatric hospitals. About cigarette burns.How much money are you making. Is itenough. Do you remember when you took drugson the sand and thought you were an alienand everything seemed better that way.That never happened I say you’re imagining things.All I did was stand on…

by Maria Zoccola the first day, the big cheese sends half a can of waspkill into the nest on the porch. not truly a nest. a clump of gold and black bodies moving over and around each other, fixed at the join of siding and gutter. they fall to the cement with a sound like…

by Robert Wood Lynn It’s a party everyone’s real happy to see you andyou’re not stupid you don’t show them the gun nobodyis happy to see a gun and after all it’s his house andyou know how he gets so you’re gonna leave itwith the coats and there’s gonna be someone realcute there at the…

by Jeddie Sophronius I have found my kind hiding withinthe walls of their shophouses. They speak ina forbidden language among their own,one which I’ve never learned. They’ve changed their names into something easier to pronounce:a forest is shaped into a monk, amemory is molded into faith, andthe flood dries up and becomes sky. Some have…

by Naomi Kanakia My thieving bairn is fullishcrafty kind, with rosy cheeksAnd a totty mind. She goeth throughMy cupboards all, desks and drawersThrow, and the impress of her butterHands, marks every bagatelleWith the sweat of her disdain.I seen her looks, her tiny toes,The mind that cannot kenThe language and the thoughtOf the Anglo-Saxon race.You’ll have…

by Jami Macarty *standing in the trees the color of fatigues someone wholly addleddraws his pocket knife           cuts cedar limb from cedar tree           whittles the bark from the bow                                                whittles wood to waster *where violets dress the undergrowth hell-tanglePiper palms moss                                        her knees turned mauve           for a sunny noneconomical find: a…

by Courtney Kalmbach emily dickinson     would you place a tea towel on your head in the middle of a forest     would you sing to an apple snail sliding across your boot     would the apple snail write a pink script of apple snail eggs on your shoe       would you slough the billet-doux bubbling amuck       or would you let another hour hatch     meaning…

by Sam Herschel Wein she whispers loudly to my mom.It’s my reading. It’s my hometown.She’s my Rabbi’s wife.It’s so brave of you to be here,I say to my blanketas it tucks me in to bed.And then my bike said, you’re braveto be here,riding off this cliff.The chicken is brave for boilingitself through the night, becoming…

by Kristina Andersson Bicher Girl squanders her fish sticks     beats her gums against unjust                                                 monoliths She     is a gifted bootlickerher bootlicking is prolific— Father LOOK     our Girl is aphenom! Let us toast to her Very Promising Future her parents feed her        an enormous chainshe burps gold and they are stung with glee        when she spits…

by Yvanna Vien Tica may I be found sleeping in a gardengrown wild with insect wars murmuringthe many names of fireflies: lampyridae, firefly, alitaptap. Whether I woke to their happinessor distress, I can’t tell, and at my feet are all the homes I crackedand mixed in a stymied omelet. Even if the world points at…