Category: Poetry

Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Jenny Grassl

Woman’s Mappa Mundi—The Promontory Imprint a bubbling gone rogue my song summons hounds of heaven there are no sailors to risk sirens sea pig rides the waves my lap subsumes blood chambers of the deep fins of all the fathersa dead man’s float cracked and crashed by a shopping cart ship mast skews vertebrae in…
Bad Survivalist Hybrid by Elissa Fertig: “Thank You for Contacting The Void. Your Scream Is Very Important to Us.”

Private jets emit fourteen times more pollution than commercial airline flights. With all of the flash floods that have been happening in Las Vegas, we are going to erode the topsoil until all that’s left is bedrock. Last night we went to Dorian’s and I had three glasses of white wine and your girlfriend barely…
Bad Survivalist Poetry: “All Four Toothbrushes Have Teeth” by Jo Morrigan Black

All four toothbrushes have teeth, soI mustn’t touch them the toothbrush her ex left behind five months ago hasteeth the shaggy bristled toothbrush with the suction cup has teeth the toothbrush that she held in her mouth yesterday while she texted that she’d like me to come over hasteeth the toothbrush still under plastic has…
Five Poems: Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

This Doom I am still learning to die for myself.I can’t unremember a few. And I knowpeople who are enough gravity, whowill look you in the bullseye and say:this is how to stay, this is how to live.But here are their hands, tugging ontothe rainline from their eyes calling Godfrom the other end as if…
Two Poems by Jan Wiezorek

Uphill Uphill disorients us,our gnarly breathing,not knowing howher sentiment loadsher florid face, rotatingunder leaves succumbedto false serenity: Had to putmy dog down, she says—like standing on her head,blood rushing to her face,eyes roiling leaves—hillyfootfalls, pausing, no treescomfort her, no words, noquiet, upside lying down.I’m trying not to cry, to bestrong for her; her breathsclimbing (penumbral)…
Two Poems by John Gallaher

A Private Language In the parking lot this afternoon, a woman (mid-60s?) walked downthe row, got into a silver Ford sedan parked next to me,and sat there a bit like she’s really thinking, like she’s contemplatingexistence, working on her thousand-yard stare, as I was loadingmy groceries. Then she got back out, went down a couple…
Poetry: “God Responds [to the Proust Questionnaire]” by Jubi Arriola-Headley

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals [their] true nature. —Vanity Fair Where the typical journalistic interview tailors questions to the particular qualities of a subject, the Proust questionnaire’s unchanging…
Sandra Marchetti: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

Lake at Dusk for GMH He said it shonelike shook foil.It was that butadd gas rainingthen light a match,or plug it in.It was as if youthrew live coilsbeneath, a sparkingroil the kayakssliced throughto reach the draping shore. Crustacean Like pinball flippers or the barin a coin pusher game, redlegs scuttle to the rock’s edgewhere my…
A “Test” for Side A: Visual Poetry by Valen Arcelo

Mini-interview with Valen Arcelo HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? VA: One of the turning points that has shaped me as a writer was discovering the novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and the poem “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” by E. E. Cummings. Honestly, the first time I saw these…