Poetry

by Elisabeth Giffin Speckman... They come to him again and again. He never needs to stalk, just holds a pinky to the sky and they come. They come and they land and he smiles. You try to snap a picture but it's always blurred.

by Naa Asheley Ashitey...Watch the way the clavicle collapses Beneath the heel of the boot. The strain it placed on the bone Was too fast for angiogenesis.

by Adam McOmber... Because even if you did, even if you drove two thousand miles, you wouldn’t have gone far enough. You’d bring all of it with you. Cornfields and Ruined Love and Backroad Graveyards.

by Bob Hicok...As you know very well now, silence is quiet, and love has nothing to do with the heart, and time heals some wounds and makes others deeper...

by Zhu Xiao Di...Everything hosts a party at home, inviting nothing, something, and anything.

by Elena Zhang...In this movie, God falls in love with me. Our meet-cute is at the grocery store. I bump into Him and drop a carton of eggs. From the splattered yolk, God creates a dozen yellow-throated warblers.

by Adam Michael Finney...He hands me the telescope. Says, Look. And I see a speckled smudge suspended there like an ultrasound.

by Lucas Reilly...Remember, the three things to remember are death, taxes, and I will forget my wallet and/or my keys.

by Lydia Buzzard...A missile soaring in a flock’s V formation is no gosling and yet they both seek heat.

by Liz Berkstresser...When the floor stops moving, they take us off the truck. There’s a trail of blood leading to an open space with a green velvet floor.

by Zebulon Huset...There’s always a seed crystal ready to replicate itself. The mother-soup bags. It’s not like the bags of bags were precious, but I dreamed better when I knew they were safe.

by William Taylor Jr. ... Me and my 5 dollars worth of sad songs on the jukebox heart, my Lost Highway heart, my Richard Brautigan San Francisco Heart, my Brothers Karamazov heart, my one last drink at 3 a.m. heart,

by Julieanne Larick...if you think our legs are green pears in a bowl if you think there’s merit to wearing a leotard in the dark take us home tonight and fistfeed us chex-mix by the bucketful

by Claire Lee...The word bubbles under his skin, then pops, dissipating into his blood like soap, air. Brother’s tongue is dry as desert, doesn’t feel the slow, heavy heartbeat need to wet it.

by Ben Starr...Until he could fall asleep while he was already sleeping, burying sleep deep inside pockets fast asleep, tucked away like the hand-painted nesting dolls my grandmother brought with her when she swam the Atlantic.

by Ewen Glass...is not a pub, it’s a stream, meandering black circles halved by footbridge. Kids rhyme their way past skulking little duckies

by Jason Davidson...and I thought I heard glass breaking and wondered if I would ever eat chocolate again and wondered if I would remember the language of this compromise

by Lorrie Ness...She spread newspapers atop the bed & let the ads bleed onto her damp thighs until a Liquidation Sale tattoo blazed across her skin.

by Jeffrey Hermann...You can squeeze a human brain into the same container, she added, but you won’t see anything remarkable. Now you’re looking into a mirror. Lay down your weapons and kill an idea of yourself up close. Face to face. Stop practicing taxidermy.

by Atar Hadari...People on the subway catch your eye and blow away like sparks striking the hay alight flown out before the barn’s in flames.