Category: Poetry

Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Our Very First Shared Fig Newton, 1986” by Zebulon Huset

A buried poem* of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig” My early cookie preference was for classics—Oreo, Chips Ahoy, the exotic Nutter Butterfor special occasions that don’t requirecandle or cake. All day at summer campfending off “Indian” burns and wet williesat the same time, mealtimes the only respitefor both of us, it seemed. Our otherwiseempty…
“What the body will say when you’re dead”: A New Side A Poem by Jeff King

What the body will say when you’re dead He swallowed pills abilify aristada atenolol benzodiazepine buspar chantix divalproex sodium lithium paxil warfarin zoloft zyprexa for thoughts that didn’t make sense for fixing a body He lived smoking a cigarette on the porch in the street in a portrait with ferns a portrait of placid water …
“One Punch”: A Haunted Passages Prose Poem by John Wall Barger

Either he dies or I die.—Duk-Koo Kim, before his 1982 world championship boxing match with Ray Boom Boom Mancini I. The boxer Duk-Koo Kim grew up poor in Kojin, a fishing village east of Seoul. Whenever he asked for money his mother walloped him. His mother married four times. At fourteen he moved to Seoul,…
“Story”: Side A Prose Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Story I say I don’t want to tell my story but it’s all I want to talk about. The husbands, lovers, one-night-stands, the sweet weekend-artists, I have to rehash them, have to describe that room in Antwerp that looked out on the Zoo—red walls and an hourly rate, across the place from where the railway…
Haunted Passages: Three Poems by Rita Mookerjee

Pyre The ghost vibrates with the furyof someone who was flayed alivebut I like to pretend his death wasdignified like the silent drop ofa tiger lily petal no witnesses noscreams when he is awake henever stops working relentlessand viscous like mercury and herises from a soft grave to chop uphickory logs even though it takeshours…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “How We Make Do” by Ginger Ayla

My grandma said in the Depression they ate specks of marrow from the bone, in the Depression they’d wear out every man-made material to deterioration, so determined they were to love things to death. I am familiar with the economics of diminishing, have added more until it became less, squandered like backs and necks of…
“Shrouded by death & isolation is a promise / a future”: Haunted Passages Poetry by Brekken Carns

I. Wanted: the dead image of her human face — a sheep butchered on the dewy grass tongue dangling below its pale soft nose newborn-pink eyes frozen wild in terror (terror such a wild thing) as if in formalin the back right leg torn clean off, jagged muscles steaming and gone ripped from socket a…
Three Poems by Elijah Rushing Hayes

For a long time I’m unhappy then I’m fine … I’m fuller than any moon.I’m made of cobalt hearts.I’m everything inside the multitude of another.Here I am inside my kitchen peeling an apple.The apple takes up the entire room.Wonderful living with you and seeing you.No, I let you sleep.Or why we love or what love…
A Haunted Passages Poem: “The Red Kickball” by Jason Melvin

We thought it’d be funnot waiting for nightfallsticky summer afternoon séancesun high up in the skyeight of us just kissing the teen yearshanging out on my back porchalways in search of a thrill and a scare We circled up discussed next movesWhen all four grandparents and your fatherare dead by time you’re eleventhere are plenty…