Category: Poetry

Hybrid Piece from the Future: “Genetic Engineering Demonstration Gone Wrong” by Bethany Jarmul

No one believed umbrellas could be grown in fields, could open their faces to the firmament like foxgloves. But I raised the curtain and revealed—to gasps of delight—a wonderful waterproof leaf-canopy with sturdy vine-shaft and real root-handle. What luck! I held it over a child’s head just as the rain roused. The crowd cheered, applauded.…
“There Is News Along the Ohio River”: Four Hybrid Pieces from the Future by Beth Gilstrap

XVII. There is news along the Ohio river: a young man has tied his loosening jeans up with twine and huddles into his denim jacket, a bird peeking out of a nest, but the fabric may as well be a brittle photograph wet and dried a hundred times before he taped it over the crack in…
Side A: Two Poems by Arden Levine

To the Trade Through the driver’s side window comes sunto burn my thighs as I look for new fire out there:the many tongues of trees, that cardinal plumage,those things that turn over and over and over. Most people get about eighty autumns.But, when put that way, it seemsa scam, the rest held below the counter,the…
Side A English-to-English Poetry Translation: “The Morning of the Poem” by Matthew Klane

The Morning of the Poem Bonjour madame,I am the Marcel Proustof toast and jam,orange juice,honeydew melonoatmeal,The Irish kindcoffee and the news:I’d like to sharea pipe with Baudelaire,Youcould be mynineteenth-centurydandy dudeTyping pseudo-symbolismsomething meaning somethingdoesn’t mean a thingat all:I’ve searchedthe collected WilliamCarlos Williamsfor something calledthe Poison Line:a shortand seeminglySenseless:“Are you surewe shouldn’t justgo to church?”no siree,Bob!Who has…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by LM Brimmer

Un-Imagined Mother n. • I dreamt a baby again • the morning after my empty womb evolved through the limitless contraction • Mother ? I can’t. Mother I can’t. • just your painful, irreverant abdomen, halfling eye half cortex • accustomed to the gut of a wolf • grieflonging has grayed me • Mother of…
Natalie Marino: Two Poems for Haunted Passages

If I Were a King I could believe in God. I would wish the grapefruitheld in my handcould turn into a little sun. I would refuse to seethat everything born before me was already gold,that even wealth can’t stop a daughter from cryingat the sight of a hardened rose. If I were a king,I wouldn’t…
Three Original Prose Poems by Michael Robins

On Solitude What can only be a perfect phrase, hurried on the back of a receipt, subsequently caught in the wind & flown forever away. Your eyes are not what they were, imperfect & especially in the morning before gravity once more proves us little. First to sit in the reglazed tub, its waters rise…
Two Poems for Side A: Jonathan Dubow

The Unwound The unwoundable wound will, willing, willing.The olive trees bull dozed (the unknowable being en acted), someone else’s mother with drawing, drawn out, writhing, writing, engraved. Midrash A comparison is necessary here.Possession, according to R’ Ahabic, suggests difficult,distant,without. According to R’ Aschre it suggests the hole,mask (shadow),and (what I thought) the name of another. Mini-interview…
“Ending’s Etiquette” by Lucy M. Logsdon: Poetry for Side A

Ending’s Etiquette First, I notice fine lines parenthesizingmy once full lips. I google wrinkles.Learn that over ten on one’s facemeans give the fuck up. A strong whitestreak appears in my bangs; I cut themoff. They return, spread into forbidden zones, smooth as scouringpads. Age spots my hands, forearms,chest, cheeks, thighs. At parties,I no longer command…