POETRY: ISSUE SIX

Melissa Barrett

Melissa Barrett

FROM “A FRENCH INTERIOR”: The shrubs rub into leaves, leaves left   /   in corners, penny red. A dirt path around   /   the side. A dirty life.’s a line break   [keep reading...]

Thea Brown

Thea Brown

FROM “WHERE IN”: In what silver streak lives the other life,   /   the other killing ghost left traces like usual. The other   /   life left killing.  [keep reading...]

Lauren Camp

Lauren Camp

FROM “THE DAY YOU STOP”: One day will be tomorrow. The day of truce   /   and socket and beaten. The day   /   you shrink into stopping, the day threadbare and pain-   /   shamed and limit.   /     [keep reading...]

Sampurna Chattarji

Sampurna Chattarji

FROM “ASKEW”: Sunday a ball of wool   /   playing into the pause   /   of kittenish whim   /   the ant-eater is   /   sulking again   /   somewhere in Miso   /   potamia the soup’s   /   on the boil   /     [keep reading...]

MRB Chelko

MRB Chelko

FROM “DARKNESS BE”: rush of cars loosed   /   from the nearest red light   /   villagers   /   storm the castle   /   a wave   /   of shields broken   /   over kids   /   in Ukraine in bed   /   my husband and I be   /   pajamas   [keep reading...]

Patrick Culliton

Patrick Culliton

FROM “STOP IT CROWN”: When the dead think of America   /   they lose their stench.   /   Oh scentless skeletons,   / /   when my love thinks of America,   /   does she have new arms,   /   flexible as stems?   [keep reading...]

John Gallaher

John Gallaher

FROM “WHEN THEY GIVE YOU ADVICE, CONSIDER THE SOURCE”: Today I’m practicing my inner calmness. I have meetings   /   after meetings, so I’ve decided it’s a good day for inner   /   calmness.   [keep reading...]

Ricky Garni

Ricky Garni

FROM “THE OTHER MAN”: It’s a movie of a woman   /   who is about to be married   /   and falls in love with another   /   man. The other man is perfect,   /   anyone would fall in love with   /   him.   /     [keep reading...]

Meghan Lee

Meghan Lee

FROM “CABLE”: I am tired of running my tongue over my teeth   /   they ache t feels like the cold is inside them   /   your letter did not come my little brother peeled lemons   [keep reading...]

Kristen Orser

Kristen Orser

FROM “LITTLE TRILL GOES TO SHEEP”: Do, as if only this ocean. Its willing   /   nest pins. When it rolls back,   /   nudged by light, there’s such an evening.   / /   Everything about   /   breaks   /   is what we talk about   /   over fish.   [keep reading...]

slp

slp

FROM A GHAZAL TITLED “[43.]”: In class, you defend to young clams the sand in yr skin. Yes,   /   it cuts. A teacher is a bright pearl, a bright pearl. I eat a bright pearl.   / /   Lynching was only most obvious symptom of treaties, my trail   /   of broke.  [keep reading...]

Meghan Privitello

Meghan Privitello

FROM “LOVE, CASES OF FALLING OUT OF”: Pleasure is where boredom goes to hide   /   Sore calves are the epistemology of want   /   When a man calls a woman beautiful, he strips her of her name   /   I want to be anonymous in my portraiture  [keep reading...]

Megan Pugh

Megan Pugh

FROM “RUNNING IN PLACE”: They say history hurt because mountaintops   /   are craggy. We know the sun’ll set sooner tonight   /   than the night before. When a camera obscura   /   brings the whole neighborhood into the den  [keep reading...]

Amelia Salisbury

Amelia Salisbury

FROM “I USED TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE A FLOWER”: I used to know how to make a flower.   /   To push its tendrils deep into wet earth.   /   In those days what we ate was simpler.   /   It’s like that again when the windows grow dark   [keep reading...]

Matt Shears

Matt Shears

FROM “RESEMBLING BENDABLE SWANS”: Surgically, the stitch of afternoon   /   yellows splay-bottles or the organs   /   of grounding feathers. Wallow   /   masterful incendiaries, this   /   cellophane plucked apple rot   [keep reading...]

Raena Shirali

Raena Shirali

FROM “SAY I AM A SERIES OF CREEKS”: & i am warm, warm, giving, giving, always feeding   /   into someone else. every boy i’ve loved was a body   / /   better than me at the ebb; they made me runnel,   /   dirty trickle   [keep reading...]

Dolsy Smith

Dolsy Smith

FROM “SEVENTEEN”: Not unlike contemporary paintings, the   /   encounters we can’t touch we stare   /   and stare at, unable to slake the urge   /   to have what appears  [keep reading...]

Avni Vyas

Avni Vyas

FROM “MUD”: We bike to the mudhole and I’m pedaling as fast as anyone,   /   and my new nickname has become Chicken. We strip   /   to shorts and bikinis and plunge off a bridge   [keep reading...]

Elizabeth Whittlesey

Elizabeth Whittlesey

FROM “MR. DARWIN IS BRIEFED”: First they called the clay despicable, and then   /   they called the clay the most tremendous branch   /   ever to sprout from the invisible spire   [keep reading...]

Nicholas Wong

Nicholas Wong

FROM “ORIENTALISM”: We grieved for Kim Jong Il. We had to   /   believe the country was a mute that had lots   /   of words to offer. We worked with cows,   / /   ate them, then tree barks and human calves.   [keep reading...]

POETRY ARCHIVES

Janelle Adsit

Janelle Adsit

FROM “TURN THIS MAP INTO SKY”:   there are 350 blues in the Mountain Bluebird  /  beating rhythm of blue beating crest  /  of feather beating skin  /  rainbow beam of blue, not sky blue  /  not the second when sky first came into view   [keep reading...]

Samuel Amadon

Samuel Amadon

FROM “OH STEREO”:   I don’t know how it goes.  /  What I had was humming  /  a little bit. That almost  /  feeling. I suspected those  //  days, I was always talking  /  about the same thing,  /  and I intended to change  /  the subject   [keep reading...]

Will Arbery

Will Arbery

FROM “IN WHICH TARRARE EATS TWO COVETED BOPPERS”:   Last night, this, Bieber, you sat perch and says “Yo, I think you might be my best friend in the world.” You ask, does Tarrare dream. Yes I have. You say   [keep reading...]

Elizabeth Arnold

Elizabeth Arnold

FROM “A LARGE SADNESS”:   swelling, welling  /  in me I see  /  one, want that  /  then another with the  /  passing draw  /  to a one more like  /  the first pull  /  pulling me toward that,  /  glancing  /  off it in the bright air,   [keep reading...]

Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang

FROM “A TECHNICAL DRAWING OF THE MOMENT”: Before the monument becomes remote   /   and unapproachable, a made-up anecdote   /   of easy adoration, pressed into marble   /   or a more modern plastic   [keep reading...]

Dan Beachy-Quick

Dan Beachy-Quick

FROM “DRONE”: sand and what is  /  sound, the nacre-sound,  /  this heart’s acre, bound, unbound  /  o irritant speck  /  all this dust you call clouds  /  all this doubt you found  /  just by thinking I am  /  not quite complete  /     [keep reading...]

ClaireBecker

Claire Becker

FROM “IN THE EVENING, NEATLY”:   Somebody wants to be like me  /  and I want to be somebody better.  /  We all want to be with someone  /  smarter and it’s possible  / /  we’re all somebody’s mother.  /  [keep reading...]

Ryan Bender-Murphy

Ryan Bender-Murphy

FROM “COMMUTING TO WORK”:   Three skulls that turned over their hats to the police  /  smash into each other and create a new brain.  /  I tear through it like the blade that whirls  /  at the bottom of a sink.   [keep reading...]

Monica Berlin and Beth Marzoni

Monica Berlin & Beth Marzoni

FROM “ALL THE PARTICULAR PLACES WE’VE KNOWN WINDOW SOMETIMES AND SOMETIMES”:   open, sometimes wedge shut, mute  /  the street noise, sometimes light-strewn  / /  & sometimes a tree, never willow   [keep reading...]

Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder

FROM “POWERED”:   A lamp powered by blood is called  /  a miracle and a legend  /  powered by blood is called a church.  /  I am not against anything  /  not even infinity I  /  just don’t want to be made to watch.   [keep reading...]

Kara Candito

Kara Candito

FROM “ELEVATOR: A LOVE STORY”:   Someone says, a poem can’t just plunge into  /  surrealistic bewilderment no matter how much  /  your life sucks. Someone else says,  /  the attempt to store or isolate momentum is tyranny.   [keep reading...]

Sam Cha

Sam Cha

FROM “HOVER”: I saw a peregrine drift   /   to the weathervane of the church:   //   wedge of sky snagged on cross   /   of rusted copper   //   there was no ringing, no   /   golden glory hallowed   //   crowning—only the bird   [keep reading...]

Dan Chelotti

Dan Chelotti

FROM “THE MIDDLE AGES”:   A Saint is being murdered.  /  In another corner, he is dead.  /  At the top, we grieve the loss  /  of St. Peter the Martyr.  /  And even though di Bartolo  /  has Peter scrawling ‘Credo’   [keep reading...]

Ching-In Chen

Ching-In Chen

FROM “ORAL HISTORY REVISITED: INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSISTANT”: Each house curves a may-open story if you follow his way. Do not open any free doors. We all pitch all touch up. No history screaming, no yelling.   [keep reading...]

Heather Christle

Heather Christle

FROM “AND THIS TOO COMES APART”:   People agree with sleep  /  They nod into it  /  but death they sometimes fight off  /  until they can’t  /  and then  /  from their graves  /  they stick out their tongues  / /  Good for them  /  [keep reading...]

Lisa Ciccarello

Lisa Ciccarello

FROM “WE ARE NOT HOSTAGES SO MUCH AS WE HAVE BEEN TASKED TO HOLD UP THIS WALL FOREVER”:   We want for humor to be our general  /  but our last general betrayed us  / /  He is our enemy whose face is the clay   [keep reading...]

Darin Ciccotelli

Darin Ciccotelli

FROM “THE BLINDS”:   Whichever man that is woman that is  /  contorting their flesh. Whichever man with men  /  with a Roman thinness the women—  /  that private vowel goes public  /  and all of us stop, and all of us scan  /  [keep reading...]

John Lee Clark

John Lee Clark

FROM “QUANTUM PHYSICS”:   I am not sure what physics means much less quantum  //  I did watch the TV show Quantum Leap in the boys' dormitory  //  I mention that I watched it in the boys' dormitory because   [keep reading...]

Jennifer Denrow

Jennifer Denrow

FROM “SEPTEMBER STORIES”:   Sometimes I forget how permanent we are. The people in the sea share each other. I don’t cuss out the Pacific. I hear transformations happen in me. There are just emotions now. [keep reading...]

Christopher DeWeese

Christopher DeWeese

FROM “THE RAVINE”:   This butter feeling calms me,  /  soft paws and golden light  /  making this place a good place  /  to wake into the letter  /  of yes I remain yours  /  so far as I stay alive.  /  A rented dominion  /  on the edge of town   [keep reading...]

Natalie Eilbert

Natalie Eilbert

FROM “THE RAPIST JOINS AA”: Received an email, formally written.   /   Was sorry for that night all those years ago. Signed sincerely.   //   Never spoke to anyone about this letter, the amends that must have been hiding   [keep reading...]

John Estes

John Estes

FROM “RETROACTIVE CONTINUITY”: One of those days when it’s like the dog ate the grenade   /   And the children play too close to it   /   So you wave them off because you expect it to come at any moment   [keep reading...]

Jessica Farquhar

Jessica Farquhar

FROM “IT TAKES COURAGE TO BE YOURSELF”:   That’s gadgets on top of  /  our friendship—weights and bolts—  /  for each would do one thing and  /  have boys, misconstrued brave  /  and flighty. Each would go. [keep reading...]

Farnoosh Fathi

Farnoosh Fathi

FROM “GOLD DOLT”:   A crescent cent shores up, a new name  /  in the drip-dry day. And you know, how granted some nucleus,  /  one glues the rest to toothpicks and standing back, looks to,  /  maybe mocks, the resultant gait:  /  [keep reading...]

Jessica Fjeld

Jessica Fjeld

FROM “THE OLD GHOST OF THE GHOST-PLACE”: Like the rainstorm that I will not allow   /   to escape from between my fingers   //   The child is an animal   /  not explained by its parents   //   I want to stop traveling south   [keep reading...]

Stephanie Ford

Stephanie Ford

FROM “CATHEDRAL”:   Our sky is no less a special effect.  /  Someone slashes tomorrow’s tires,  /  this month’s billboard says You could be next.  /  Buildings fall, and stars, and dollars.  /  [keep reading...]

Carrie Fountain

Carrie Fountain

FROM “HOTTEST SUMMER ON RECORD”: I’m thinking about the night  /  we should’ve died  //  again: fifteen, in the backseat  /  of an egg-shaped car  //  as those feral boys  /  started yelling balls out  //  to the driver, who gripped     [keep reading...]

Graham Foust

Graham Foust

FROM “9/10/11”:   Life’s just enough to make a life incomplete.  /  Hours at a time, a dying cynosure,  /  you, my face if it were printed on money,  //  you’ve got the nerve to tell me that I’m standing  /  too close to this poem   [keep reading...]

Kit Frick

Kit Frick

FROM “[THE MEN HERE ARE CRUEL]”:   The men here are cruel       by some estimations  /  withholders of gesture       embrace  //  it’s very personal     but not how you think  /  this is infection’s way  //          they keep  /  a prudent   [keep reading...]

Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney

Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney

FROM “FIGURE AT NIGHT GUIDED BY THE PHOSPHORESCENT TRACKS OF SNAILS”:  The background is sky blue, a sky as seen through the gray of the merest veil of smog. Those aren’t birds. That isn’t a woman.   [keep reading...]

Jules Gibbs

Jules Gibbs

FROM “YOU ARE/N’T EVERYONE”: We know heat is not made up  /  of many tiny heats, but suns  /  explode with smaller suns. We know  /  the speed of wind increases with  /  height     [keep reading...]

Tyler Gobble

Tyler Gobble

FROM “DONE GOT HOTTEST”:   Say you love all the world         Optimism and stinky metal        Mud  /  in the hand        Three in the bush and counting        One Two Three Four  /  How many times can I say Sissy Girl is the cutest   [keep reading...]

Alen Hamza

Alen Hamza

FROM “AGAIN THE FABLE DIES”: A man of my gender once said to me,  /  Let it go, and it will go away from you.  /  If at the end I realize I thought I wanted  /  to be a poet but deep down I really wanted  /  to be a poem—so what?     [keep reading...]

H. L. Hix

H. L. Hix

FROM “I AM BECOME, NOT WHAT I WANDER THROUGH, BUT MY WANDERINGS”: If my wanderings arrive at, do they occur in, rooms?  /  I myself bear death’s tincture, exude its very attar.  /  Still, I post apotropaics.     [keep reading...]

Anna Maria Hong

Anna Maria Hong

FROM “THE GRAY BOX”: The apple is red, because the leaves are  /  green. There’s a place in the brain for orange, a  /  grove of reception like Nebraska or  /  Rome. Everyone is fond of Iowa.  //  The moving dot is where     [keep reading...]

Fanny Howe

Fanny Howe

FROM “COOLOCK”:   I never laughed harder than that night alone.  / /  It was as if the sky had an accident  /  and out came the land  / /  like a silver and yellow glandular  /  oil along the estuary.  / / /  You were in the old hotel   [keep reading...]

Krzysztof Jaworski

Krzysztof Jaworski

FROM “THE BLUE EYES OF THE PROLETARIAT”: The factories are not waiting on our poems.  /  The cigars of the smokestacks are burning up for nothing. Steel  /  thoughtlessly fills out its forms.     [keep reading...]

Thomas Kane

Thomas Kane

FROM “Q : WHAT IS THAT BRIDGE FOR?”: In a movie things are built in twenty-five minutes that would really take years. Those bridges are for never being useful. In other words, those bridges aren’t real.     [keep reading...]

Paul Killebrew

Paul Killebrew

FROM “EXCLAMATIONS IN EARNEST”:   We seem to be  /  surrounded. We  /  go straight into  /  the undependable  /  air. Movies  /  about us, the mush  /  in my mouth,  /  how I love  /  to braid our arms  /  around narrow trees  [keep reading...]

Eric Kocher

Eric Kocher

FROM “GROW YE, GROW”: There were entire years I kept  /  promising everyone  /  self-improvement  /  like knowing me  /  was some sort of investment  /  they had made  /  in knowing someone better  /  than me in the future     [keep reading...]

Lo Kwa Mei-en

Lo Kwa Mei-en

FROM “ROMANCE WITH BLACKOUT”:   When a blackout is what I am, not what I had,  /  loving is my nursing a love with just enough stories  /  to leap from. When day’s gone down, news is what is  /  thrust into proof.   [keep reading...]

NickLantz

Nick Lantz

FROM “THE PROPHET”:   Nighttime. Just off stage right, the noise and lights of traffic on a busy road. Entering from stage right, an Animal drags itself, uttering pained sounds punctuated by sickening howls. Its injuries are so severe we cannot tell   [keep reading...]

Margaret LeMay

Margaret LeMay

FROM “THOSE ARE BRIGHT”: This was the early-on of it: felt   /   full watching oneself stuck as a grass   /   blade in teeth. Walks the plaid and thinks of you   /   still, your right and diagnosable   //   wishes when pressed we wet to the thighs   [keep reading...]

Matthew Lippman

Matthew Lippman

FROM “LIFE OF A TRAIN”:   Charlie bought me a train because he loved me. I loved him.  /  It was a choo choo train. We got on it and rode to Italy, right across the waves.  /  He’d never been to Italy. I’d been once.   [keep reading...]

Aditi Machado

Aditi Machado

FROM “SLEEPLESS, HE COUNTS”:   Outside their window an owl is freezing. Inside,  /  she is asleep. He puts his head to her chest  /  and presses in: he hears something like a voice  /  thickening into age as by increments of snow   [keep reading...]

Jennifer MacKenzie

Jennifer MacKenzie

FROM “REFUGEE BREATHING #3”: The rain is falling incorrectly God help it  /  The distant brother is making up stories   /  about one Natalie who came and went   //  and is not a thief. In immaterial production     [keep reading...]

Kyle McCord

Kyle McCord

FROM “WHAT’S LEFT”:   I’m astonished no one has ever suggested that your sight has simply  /  preceded you into your following life. This isn’t intended cruelly.  /  Like Siddhartha, but much less zealously   [keep reading...]

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae

FROM “THE PROMISE IS NEW LIFE”:   Grandmother most of it  /  for most of it I       wasn’t there for most of it  /  And are you resting now do you await  /  The new heavens and the new earth  /  The promise as I’ve come to understand   [keep reading...]

Alice Miller

Alice Miller

FROM “A MORNING IN TROY”:  Inside the wooden horse alone  / /  Wooden walls thin enough to let light through  / /  Humid under wooden skin, like the oak can breathe  /  Like this dull pulse is the horse’s organ   [keep reading...]

Andrew Nance

Andrew Nance

FROM “DECAY”: As though it would  /  one day keep your teeth  /  clean, dawn trimmed  /  at its dew point, my skeleton  /  bent back, everything  /  about me was a warranty.  /  Dusk’s point of lucidity  /  went floating into view     [keep reading...]

Geoffrey Nutter

Geoffrey Nutter

FROM “PORTRAITS OF OUR FATHERS”:   My father was a vendor of cabbage nets.  /  What was yours? This is a portrait  /  of my father as a soldier; this the blade  /  he carried, like a saber, not a saber,  /  but a blade-like sword of grass  /  [keep reading...]

Geoffrey G. O'Brien

Geoffrey G. O’Brien

FROM “DISTRACTION”:   Spenser coined blatant to show us the scandal  /  Of truth can only be invented. The same  /  Holds true for you, in whom subject and object  /  Sound alike a common depth, “the never other   [keep reading...]

Brian Oliu

Brian Oliu

FROM “BIRTHDAY CAKE (1:21)”:   Let’s keep this short. There are no more birthdays. The digits will be reclaimed in area codes, pennies in a jar, flight numbers of planes back to you.  / /    [keep reading...]

Paul Otremba

Paul Otremba

FROM “SENTENCES (KÜNSTLERROMAN)”: Not red not a line but spots in a book and “L”  /  was for “Lion” so you get the idea  //  for your ideas somewhere.  //  Unremarkable really was the coterie of nails     [keep reading...]

Marc Paltrineri

Marc Paltrineri

FROM “HOW DO YOU SAY IT”:  What day is  /  today yes today  /  is Good Friday  /  and I’d like to find you  /  something in Spanish  /  just to say how  /  wide awake the sky is  /  and fuzzy red things  /  are appearing  /  on the tips of trees   [keep reading...]

Kate Partridge

Kate Partridge

FROM “I LIKE THE MUSCLES ON THAT ONE”: Andrew takes us to the Phillies game to watch  /  the players slam balls toward the outfield.  //  The muscles are the active organs of locomotion,  //  endowed with the property of contractability.   [keep reading...]

Christopher Rey Perez

Christopher Rey Pérez

FROM “SNAILS”:  snails  /  snails  /  I love snails  /  what’s there not to love  /  about snails?  / /  snails can live on  /  the line  /  and when I take  /  the 63 past  /  Ma’ale Adumim I  /  think about  /  snails  /  snails  / /     [keep reading...]

Allan Peterson

Allan Peterson

FROM “SO”:  earth is a centrifuge, and what we take as normal  /  is in flux.  /  Eons of atmosphere, continents racing and languages  /  flung about the planet  /  are sorted like blood, providing for strange arrangements.   [keep reading...]

Beth Woodcome Platow

Beth Woodcome Platow

FROM “SICK DAY”: When I called out from work I said it was because _________ was sick.  /  She wasn’t sick but she died in my dream the night before.  /  In a dream no one records the time of death. No one prepares.     [keep reading...]

Jessica Poli

Jessica Poli

FROM “IT WAS SOMEONE’S BIRTHDAY AND WE WERE HAVING A PICNIC”:  Suddenly the sky full of jellyfish.  /  The ocean has turned upside down and now  /  we need to swim to the bottom.  /     [keep reading...]

Lynne Potts

Lynne Potts

FROM “WRECKS AND WRECKS”:  Owner Fred of body shop fame, also thief, one hand  /  in the mouth of the sink yawned in front of a TV  /  that looked like a lunar landscape starting with zero  /  and going past America   [keep reading...]

Nina Puro

Nina Puro

FROM “EXTERIOR PORTRAIT: YEAR OF THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU: I was always pulling my pants and pushing my glasses up,   /   hitting snooze then waiting   //   for a train that had just left.   [keep reading...]

Thibault Raoult

Thibault Raoult

FROM “CHICAGO, STABLE AS EVER, ENJOYS THE VIEW DOWN ITS OWN PANTS”:   Gavotte, I’m running out of montre-moi, no sweetener  /  Since Greek reproached us all for allegory allegory 4-5-6 [sung].  /  [keep reading...]

Anne Marie Rooney

Anne Marie Rooney

FROM “LITTLE GIRL WALK DOWN”:   That street and the side of you glinting  /  In light which neither  /  Shows nor ever will show  /  You your muscle, your own  /  Diamond face. It practices  /  A monument open in you,  /  [keep reading...]

Catie Rosemurgy

Catie Rosemurgy

FROM “THE SIXTEENTH BURNING”: Do you mind the smell of a scalding pan?  /  The bird bones rearranged each day next to the front step?  //  Because I don’t.  /  I really don’t.  //  Pretty scraps of our mothers’ linens decorate the tree     [keep reading...]

Dan Rosenberg

Dan Rosenberg

FROM “GROWNUP LOVE”:  Inside the sacrament our daughter lies  /  and ages and three kinds of hunger sag  / /  over the belt of her being ours. Such a  /  daughter we have in the shared spaces,  /  such a boulder comes tumbling, picks up   [keep reading...]

M. C. Rush

M. C. Rush

FROM “DISSENSUS”:  Is everything, anything significant?  /  Is anything, everything important?  / /  One thing is always like another,  /  we just don't always know how.  / /  We live in a Fippy Darkpaw world.   [keep reading...]

Lauren Russell

Lauren Russell

FROM “BEGOTTEN, NOT MADE”: I do not believe in astrology, despite my appearance.   /   I’m always a hippy for Halloween, to avoid hassle   /   and expense. But this year an old friend laughed   /   and said, “You can’t be what   [keep reading...]

Tomaz Salamun

Tomaž Šalamun

FROM “GIRLIE”:   Girlie!  /  Come out, girlie!  /  Hey, girlie, peep through with your head!  /  A strange wind starts to blow,  /  pieces of glass are glued to the grass.  /  Apricots roll toward the sidewalk.  /  [keep reading...]

Jordan Sanderson

Jordan Sanderson

FROM “FORMULA #15”:   Unless you are a master of jigsaw puzzles,  /  don’t let a doctor teach you how to regard your body.  /  A good vet, one who sees fish mostly, might recognize  /  something inside you.  /  [keep reading...]

Dara-Lyn Shrager

Dara-Lyn Shrager

FROM “THE SECOND SECRET”: Two girls share a bike.   /   One pedals, steers, avoids potholes.   /   Two holds on to One’s waist and   /   speaks too hotly in One’s ear.   //   At the park, they see a man   /   open his coat.   [keep reading...]

Sandra Simonds

Sandra Simonds

FROM “BLACK LEOTARD”:   There was one man, then two men, then three.  /  The worst part of me did a somersault on the balance beam.  /  The bumblebee audience cooked to 103 degrees.  /  One man bumped the next one   [keep reading...]

Ed Skoog

Ed Skoog

FROM “WHERE EVERYONE LIVED”:  Joe used to live in a tree  /  by the school and slid down insults  /  my slow head couldn’t throw back.  /  Didn’t someone fuck a cat in a tree?  /  Which tree. Did we add the tree part?   [keep reading...]

Bruce Smith

Bruce Smith

FROM “[AN ANXIOUS YOUNG RED HEAD]”:   An anxious young red head holds the telephone... It cost us what  /  we’re worth. We are what the market bears. We’re excess and ism. I can’t call  /  myself one of us.   [keep reading...]

Claire Sylvester Smith

Claire Sylvester Smith

FROM “SELF-PORTRAIT ON THE OCCASION OF SETTLING DOWN”: As summer hits us making walls out of the spring  /  and fall, so clothing goes: I live life shirted. May  //  no promotion use up my good name, may     [keep reading...]

Cindy St. John

Cindy St. John

FROM “[I WROTE THIS POEM ON BUS #17]”:  I wrote this poem on bus #17 coming home late at night after a poetry reading while looking at “Rich Kids of Instagram” on my phone and instead of disgust I thought   [keep reading...]

Donna Stonecipher

Donna Stonecipher

FROM “FOUND TO BE BORROWED FROM SOME MATERIAL APPEARANCE (5)”: The divorced man sat at his desk pretending to work but really imagining getting stuck in an elevator with his ex-wife. His theory was as follows:   [keep reading...]

Jacob Sunderlin

Jacob Sunderlin

FROM “CHARLES MANSON”:   During our time here nothing much  /  will be talked about.  /  I will come to some camera  /  in the desert of your making & speak.  / /  I remember getting in the car.  /  This is my country full of pairs.  /  [keep reading...]

Russel Swensen

Russel Swensen

FROM “LUXURIOUS INTERIORS”:  1.  There’s a rising action in my in mind. There’s a denouement beneath my tongue. My captive audience chews its hand off at the wrist.  / /  2.  The premier is found strangled in the trunk of his car.   [keep reading...]

Gale Marie Thompson

Gale Marie Thompson

FROM “PULSAR”:   And so said, and so you said  /  I want to go  /  with you, without you.  /  I only wanted for to see  /  the spectral light.  /  So lucked out,  /  so catching,  /  so dwelled.  /  [keep reading...]

Emily Toder

Emily Toder

FROM “BACKFIRE”:  The essence of backfire  /  and the feeling of backfire  /  are not the same  /  as its original meaning  / /  I have consulted no reference  /  work on this I have only consulted  /  the sad work I’ve done   [keep reading...]

Henry Walters

Henry Walters

FROM “PRESTO”: Let’s play for real this time, I mean it, no matter what, the first one to speak is It, & after that it’s the thing you say that’s It, alright, but after that, it’s the way you say whatever you say that’s It, that’s it   [keep reading...]

Kerri Webster

Kerri Webster

FROM “SKINS”: Here is the swan splayed dead   /   on the bed of the pickup truck, massive   /   wings blue-tinged—odd,   /   but I don’t know enough about light   /   to decode what I see.
[keep reading...]

Betsy Wheeler

Betsy Wheeler

FROM “LIMITATIONS OF SOLO PLAY”: Lean-to tree branches form   //   dinosaur faces   //   a bird wearing moon boots   //   lizard nose in a hollow constellation of leaf-stars.   //   Mama carries the white morning in a woven basket   [keep reading...]

David Wojciechowski

David Wojciechowski

FROM “CYNTHIA,”:   Once I also asked myself to marry me. The ceremony was actually really lovely, but then when I tossed the bouquet I also caught it. That’s when I realized everyone at the wedding was me.   [keep reading...]

Lesley Yalen

Lesley Yalen

FROM “THE PROBLEM OF PEOPLE”: Tonight the rainfall exceeded my expectations  /  on the slick dark road with possible deer.  //  Baby so quiet one might think I was myself  /  again. Deer in the shoulder might spring     [keep reading...]

Laurie Saurborn Young

Laurie Saurborn Young

FROM “VARIOUS GENERATIONS OF PLASTIC HORSES”:  Skim fifty pages of a soundless  /  sleep; dust flies up from plucked  / /  strings. Rumple-headed, twenty-  /  five years later, finding my crush  / /  on Han Solo means   [keep reading...]

ISSUE SIX:

FICTION: Lisa Beebe, Karl Harshbarger, Lauren Johnson, J. Robert Lennon

NONFICTION: Matthew Gavin Frank, Deborah Thompson

POETRY: Melissa Barrett, Thea Brown, Lauren Camp, Sampurna Chattarji, MRB Chelko, Patrick Culliton, John Gallaher, Ricky Garni, Meghan Lee, Kristen Orser, slp, Meghan Privitello, Megan Pugh, Amelia Salisbury, Matt Shears, Raena Shirali, Dolsy Smith, Avni Vyas, Elizabeth Whittlesey, Nicholas Wong

POETRY ARCHIVES:

POETRY: Janelle Adsit, Samuel Amadon, Will Arbery, Elizabeth Arnold, Mary Jo Bang, Dan Beachy-Quick, Claire Becker, Ryan Bender-Murphy, Monica Berlin & Beth Marzoni, Melissa Broder, Kara Candito, Sam Cha, Dan Chelotti, Ching-In Chen, Heather Christle, Lisa Ciccarello, Darin Ciccotelli, John Lee Clark, Jennifer Denrow, Christopher DeWeese, Natalie Eilbert, John Estes, Jessica Farquhar, Farnoosh Fathi, Jessica Fjeld, Stephanie Ford, Carrie Fountain, Graham Foust, Kit Frick, Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney, Jules Gibbs, Tyler Gobble, Alen Hamza, H. L. Hix, Anna Maria Hong, Fanny Howe, Krzysztof Jaworski, Thomas Kane, Paul Killebrew, Eric Kocher, Lo Kwa Mei-en, Nick Lantz, Margaret LeMay, Matthew Lippman, Aditi Machado, Jennifer MacKenzie, Kyle McCord, Shane McCrae, Alice Miller, Andrew Nance, Geoffrey Nutter, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Brian Oliu, Paul Otremba, Marc Paltrineri, Kate Partridge, Christopher Rey Pérez, Allan Peterson, Beth Woodcome Platow, Jessica Poli, Lynne Potts, Nina Puro, Thibault Raoult, Anne Marie Rooney, Catie Rosemurgy, Dan Rosenberg, M. C. Rush, Lauren Russell, Tomaž Šalamun, Jordan Sanderson, Dara-Lyn Shrager, Sandra Simonds, Ed Skoog, Bruce Smith, Claire Sylvester Smith, Cindy St. John, Donna Stonecipher, Jacob Sunderlin, Russel Swensen, Gale Marie Thompson, Emily Toder, Henry Walters, Kerri Webster, Betsy Wheeler, David Wojciechowski, Lesley Yalen, Laurie Saurborn Young