Poetry

by Joemario Umana Mohammed Ibrahim Say | a land | where the devil is an excuse for a man not owning his act | like Eve bore the burden of Adam’s fall | and the serpent for Eve’s | a land | where man plays God | forgetting he is just a man | On the news | lights are turned pitch black even before they know themselves | The “lights” | a synonym for match sticks dead before even being lit — a ricochet metaphor — dissolved in an acid of God gives | God takes | Please tell me | wh

by Frances Klein Stevo/Unsplash At five I hid in the back lot among cedars brushing fanned branches against the top of the water, rivulets trickling through rocks and rushes, moss offering a cushioned seat on which I would live my whole life, I thought then, there among fireweed and forget-me-not, among slug trail and raven call, under the low dome of clouds, I would survive on the salmonberries that swam along the bank, orange and magenta explosions, on the sour stalks of rh

by Laura A. Ring Rob Laughter When we lived in the Piccadilly with its boarded up theater and ballroom, I worried about you wandering the back stairway alone, the stairway that led to the once-grand lobby, and the loading dock, and the boarded up floors of rooms once sold by the hour, so I told you there were rat monsters that skulked around the garbage bins, and if we lingered on the stairs they would come for us, you, me, your older brother, and sure enough, whenever we ski

by Hope Jordan Public domain/Joegrimes Somewhere Tom Petty’s American Girl still plays on endless loop and me and Kim walk in adolescent lockstep, tug our terrycloth shorts to cover our butts. Love’s Baby Soft and Coppertone coconut, lemon scent of Sun-In on our hair. We still count the cars with men who whistle as we walk over the bridge. Somewhere there’s still sand in a transistor radio and boys who want to talk to us, inflated inner tubes tied to the dock. Back at Grandma

by Anupam Singh, translated from Hindi by Areeb Ahmad Jens Peter Olesen A house opens like a prison. It closes like a prison. Silence has been scrawled on the faces of women, their breath held, crawling in my dreams. A man with a vain visage on whose face is visible many other faces. Lines of red tighten his eyes, laughter lies behind his moustache. This is neither a jail, nor is man a jailer. Still, it is a perfect prison. Who knows from what places women have been brought a

by Dan Alter Luke Porter Like campfires on a dark hillside, furling heat faded but I have their names I shouldn’t say, M, D in a bed dragged into trees, vague musty guest room, N for an hour upstairs, R a doorway, flares pointing to where the plane would land. World melts to body, K on floor-tiles, a bare mattress with Y near the sea, was it night, it was, their names touching down, taxiing. Body all tongues, doubled breaths, unearthly. A bunk bed L, V on her couch, what did

by Daniel Brennan Nathan Trampe Not as in the planets are aligned, but as in summer is picking our flesh from its teeth. Do not underestimate a dog with a bone to pick: I take my time in these rivers of men. On the corner of my block, the heat of lush dead things. So many beautiful, but also dead things. I’ve grown impatient with the morning light. Selfish, the way it unravels across the country in equal weight; doesn’t it know that I am a creature of relentless hunger? My co

by Stefanie Norlin Brendan Beale If we are only flesh and blood, bones and organs, how is my body still here and whole? Earthquakes ripping through my chest My thighs laid out like thick roadways through charred forests. How is my body still here and whole? I can see my history evolving Stretched skin laid out (a thick roadway through charred forests) where my daughter swam en caul, nestled between my organs. I can see my history evolving and I try to trace it like an interst

by Fatima Zahra Rene Böhmer brother a knock on the door and the skull poster hanging half supported; half dangling so the bones are sliding off onto the pale stucco; yellowed not by the sun. the boy’s shadow is above him; sketched on the underside of the bedframe in the void between the torch-light; beamed by a hollow curved inwards like the crescent moon. a monster can slides out to roll until it crashes with the door and rolls back; one must imagine sisyphus happy. he looks

by Ivy Jones Il Vagabiondo We can’t bite anymore. Latch on and stay. I would love to taste fresh ink from tattoos, stray hairs long as the Eiffel Tower’s calves. That time we went to Paris I ate a dog treat, I didn’t say bonjour, and I ate another dog treat. It rained and hailed and such, and I got your likeness put behind my elbow. Don’t doubt me; I can list things, or make “Pavlov” a verb, or smell the flaking iron balcony, or grow my fingers long and wiggly to scare the ch

by Michael Beard Martin Turgoose A loose door in the center of an empty room, the heat signature of a blue jay, unadorned calls. A handful of flowers before it becomes a handful of flowers — give it to you. Evening sky kneels into night and the dry wind rolls out the city, sheeted. You are building up quite an appetite, so much so you can hear soft music playing in the sky. The lizard remains lizardesque. One week ago when the Tennessee River still knew your name, you were. B

by Lorrie Ness Sonny Mauricio Kneeling in frost, I mistook steam rising off the innards for the deer’s soul fogging his face. He wiped his knife down the side of his jeans, taught me that the field was for dressing, the shed out back was for hanging. With a one-fingered shove, deer pendulumed from the rafters —  meat softening with age. I walk alone through the year’s first snow, unzip my coat with the same motion as his blade slitting belly to breast, disrobing the buck of i

by Bryan D. Price Wryon A/Unsplash there is something brutal about the word never like executioner or hygiene or vitiate if you’re not careful never becomes like a future a psychic is afraid to tell you about my mother went to a place called Summerlin near Las Vegas and had her palm read by a man who sold abalone on the side she told me he said I’d meet an aspiring cartoonist named Heather at a hamburger stand in West Hollywood the day I met her I was visually impaired and co

by Jennifer Brown Rémi Walle What’s hard about spring is all the light —  down-pouring thin at first, then full-flowing, impatient for sap, for green, for pollen to tumble yellow confetti along its bright chutes that slice between bare branches, this light almost solid, this light setting the air to dance the sevenveils, to disrobe, leaving the scarves where they fall. What’s hard about spring is all the yearning —  the crisp unfolding buds, leaves palely meeting the dew that

by Babo Kamel 祥晨 孟 that the sun’s humming this morning, a tune from long ago summer when the percolator kept time with a dream unfolding, each pop a call to join the day’s jazz and those early hours emerged soft, like the sound of bullrush in breeze or the chimes of church bells, that time in Blanc Sablon when one by one the doors of the shingled houses opened like momentary invitations and the townsfolk converged along the one dirt road, greeting each other to the coastal mo

by Marina Hope Wilson Steve Doig I give myself twenty to twenty five good years, best case scenario. Then maybe not so much. It might seem a morbid calculation, but I can’t help it sometimes. Someone says, W.S. Merwin was obsessed with death. Then someone else says, ALL poets are obsessed with death. But it’s living that gets me — I like lemon smeared in salt, and I like a good gin & tonic with plenty of ice, and I like a big open sky and any place with a view. I like the sof

by Farai Chaka okeykat/Unsplash The woman inking my skin said her sister died giving birth, and it was bewildering, the sway of trees afterwards. This earth is all wind and bad seeds. I am lying down shirtless, dry, and to be touched by a stranger is still intimacy. I did, l promise, try to want myself more, drink two cups less coffee each day, kiss my love and let my body do its faithful work. One pure way I’ve been half forgiven is how she sits on a patch of window light in

by Rachel Walker Raychan/Unsplash Carrots bleed their sugars to the grater. In the half-light from the kitchen window, ants crawl over the table, licking up crusted honey. We sweep carrot peels out the front door. Eggs come in on the sorting belt, clumped in dirt and shit and little feathers, dragging cobwebs from the shadowy corners of the laying house. Sometimes the shells are so soft they break in my hand. Some come smeared with too much blood to clean: these are for us. I

by Réka Nyitrai Nicolas Lafargue In Sweden a man whispers my name and wants to lie down with me in a field of tulips. But in Sweden it’s mostly winter and they don’t really have tulip fields. The man has a fever and thinks snowflakes bleed loneliness. For weeks he dreams he is a reindeer and I am the goddess of both the hunt and chastity. When you love a person, you want them to leave you, so that you can dream of them… wrote Max Voloshin to Marina Tsvetaeva. I agree - trappe

by Abhinav Jeremy Bishop After Richard Siken In this dream we drag the moon out of the lake and swallow the leftovers as if they’ll save us. You tell me this isn’t reasonable — the landscape tilts but the dream goes on. The skyline curls into your clavicle and swords clang in the background. The loudspeaker yells the lottery numbers and turns out that everyone’s lost. The horses have burnt the stables down and all the bets are off. There’s smoke everywhere but it hasn’t reach