Category: Poetry

New Poetry by Gukhui Noh: “warbler”

I place my heart in the seat next to me on the intercity bus,and we run together without looking to the side, withoutasking how we are doing, early cosmos flowers sway bythe roadside, perhaps thinking this is how sides lean againsteach other as they collide. I read the rhythm of wiping across your thinning wrists,you…
New Poem for Haunted Passages: “The Birdcage” by Martine Bellen

Sighted people tend to react to darkness like birds when their cage is covered for the night. And with my cage concealed, I rested on a bed of nettles, Hansel as my dream. Or rather, I drowned in our mutual dream, having slipped into him while asleep, and when he awoke, I—Gretel—remained in deep slumber,…
Poetry from the Future: Three Terms of Service by Sean F. Munro

TERMS OF SERVICE: Grip Semiotics & Class Diagnostics Grip pressure reveals your buyological gender, thumb-to-text tension, page-turn velocity, forearm torque, and knuckle-crack frequency. Palm sweat salinity indicates probable voting patterns. Your grip signature is compared against 4.7 billion normalized datapoints; deviations trigger Ergonomic Compliance Audits. Suspected non-binary grips are flagged for Re-Education Modules administered via…
Barbara Henning: Three Prose Poems from Boys & Men

Dan When I was in Detroit recently, my sister and I stopped at a restaurant at the Ford mansion. When we sat down, I heard a deep voice say my name. I looked up from the menu, and it was you, the maître d’. Forty years earlier, we met in a bar in Hamtramck. The…
Poetry by Michael Ruby: “Tu Ti Spezzasti”

—Giuseppe Ungaretti the imminent forwardfinding this parkleaves the melting * limit false morefor all the lost songsarena of disobedience * long for hollow solesthrough solid orificesfull thought and icingregular polishhigher organ force * the force abides wholepillows the ringand alleviates a certain * listen to silverhostess bending low * filaments of iceregistrars of hopepongo of…
Ryan Bollenbach: A Memorial Excerpt from His Chapbook Letters from a Strange Land

I first got acquainted with Ryan through his submission to our print issue, Vol. 6, where he sent two poems called “sometimes the word for tender isn’t tender.” Fortunately I’ll always have these poems to connect me back to that person and, now, his chapbook, Letters from a Strange Land, which he recently published with Carrion…
Poetry for Flavor Town USA: “A Love Letter to My Emotionally-Intelligent Air Fryer” by Anne Panning

Everyone said Goodwill will soon be flooded with you and your ilk. Butlast night I snuggled four frozen ovals of cheese bread inside your dark chamber. As if putting kids down for naps. Shh. When I tucked them intoyour warm, safe cave, your darkness held them tenderly. You melt the cheese to perfect brown freckles…
Laurie Price for Side A: Two Poems

Star Shining to get to the trees.Of light, of exact evening.A crescent whistles, scissorsin a narrow path. A long transitpasses at night pluckingat its verges. Who goes there?Who? Who gets to seam insidewith its out? A white lily like a talisman. Its light. Planted a little, partlyblack or walled—or buried. Justnot there in the dark,…
Two Poems for Haunted Passages by B. Anne Kalicki

Treno verso nord To the left a climbing sea, there and far,the cry grew only direction.A loose refrain of granite and supposed forms,under every movement.Hear the exact skies, a journeyed breathtuning to chicory, no questionor wild gladiolus, just tracing,never decided.I am real, after all, prima donnasaid gravely as her spotlight. Ponte del Diavolo and hilltopscast no…