Category: Poetry

by Carrie Chappell I skitterthrough your silver screens,your fanfare, my lipsgripping straw’stranslucence. You aremy scandal, my tycoon.You are the raspy spacewherein I trample the shy girlscout within. You arethe myth, fatty-masculinewherein I, searchinglove’s hologram, hold outthe wrapping paper to the light—.Through you and thosewho looked at you and thosewho didn’t look at youand the ways I found outabout you and the wayyou were pervasiveand the way I was not supposed tolove you and the wayI…

by H. Nicole Martin Walking down the street, biting into an apple       I mean rending the skin with every toothed grin,nothing hesitatingafter meeting my psychiatrist who                                    gestured to the tissues on a tableby the wall painted                     white and pebbled with stones, that I ran my fingers over whileshe was out of the…

by Kimberly Ann Southwick how small can a world, how melt, how green, how stretchthe dog on the floor, closer & closer              the clockeach tick a nuance, a bronze medal                          until his noseis wet on the rolling chair         how    smalla world                        Richard at the podium & the photographsof Japan          make…

by Katie Schmid A girl is trying to climb into another girlthrough her mouth. They shiver together,taking up as little space as two girlscan—and slow, through rhythmicmovements of the hips, they tryto find the seam of the world.They are trying to get out and enteranother world of their own making.They will go or they will…

by Shannon Sankey Today the light            was brief, and westood to consider it            at the window. The neighbor’s barn            was thirty bluesin quick succession, then            it was over with. I thought of each            of my dead. The house plants shook            and drew breathimperceptibly.             If they signaledsome mild message            to one another,it had probably nothing            to do with us. Shannon Sankey is the author of We Ran Rapturous…

by Maya Marshall Duplex (The Big Water) I want to say yes to the river,and live with the knowledge that I am small.             I live with the knowledge that I am small,            with all my good learning. Truth is still hard. With all my good learning, truth is still hard.Sober, I find my mind in disarray.            …

by Mariah Perkins I can’t yell at my dog, which has taught me that maybe I could have kids one day because they will have faces. Round cheeks, round jawlines, thick hair—everywhere. They will be like me, their mother. And I will see them. I will see them and think about the time I had…

by Mag Gabbert Bone the day my fingers were folded intoa swinging door’s hingeand pressed there like flowers the way my father explainedhis wife’s cancer as if it wereice the way his voice fractured in college my boyfriend’s fathertried to free a horsewith hooves stuck in a cattle guard then it reared from the sparkseach leg snapped like…

by Walter Smelt The moon’s been mulling things overand over. She’s tired of walking around the whole Earth,feeling on her back the seas’ weight.The moon is no longer sure whatshe’s advancing toward. The moonhasn’t spoken to anyone but Neil Armstrongin decades, and she worries she’s forgotten how.The moon didn’t like being walked all over, yetshe…