Category: Poetry

Excerpt from SCARLET: Three Glitched Still Lives by Francesco Levato

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. SCARLET is a digital visual/poetic meditation on the fractured state of psyche induced by extended social isolation under COVID-19 lockdown. The digital/visual poems are created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life in lockdown. The titles of poems in…
Side A Video Poem Collaboration by Penn Kemp & Gary Barwin: “The Female Line”

A note on the media: Gary Barwin created the video poem in collaboration with Canadian poet Penn Kemp. Kemp wrote the text but Barwin set it with music and visuals and they both performed it. The Female Line Some small part of us is held in our mother’s egg whenshe is in our grandmother’s womb, …
From Vol. 9: “In My Dreams There’s No One in the Maternity Ward,” a poem by Tessa Livingstone

I keep having dreams they take her from mewhen I hadn’t finished. I wanted her more. I wander halls in search of nurses. Babies.Their open mouths. Their frantic chantings. Nothing stirs here—only the peahenwho roosts in tall open trees, scratches at leaf litter, preens brown plumage. A listless planet in orbit,gravitating in and out of…
From Vol. 9: “from The Self Is Being Thought,” poetry by Amie Zimmerman

III. presented with the frameworkof fevers, faith, moonlight and such other violencean obvious definition of self I amnot ready to acceptI, predictably, am violentin my plunge to sleep greedy the dried-up bird bath I steady refuseto clean out and fillthe mock orangethat either smells like grape Kool-Aidor jasmine tea depending on how soberyou think I…
From Vol. 9: “birthday poem” by Patrick Kindig

today there are marigoldsblooming in the street& i mean this literally.there are marigolds risingfrom the seam betweenthe curb & the pavement,twelve of them, marigoldsappearing unexpectedlywhere no marigolds shouldbe. today there are marigoldsblooming in the street & iam a little bit older, a littlemore likely to diewithout warning. i am older& more likely to die withoutwarning…
Three Poems by Anat Zecharia (Translated by Tsipi Keller) from Vol. 9

Lust Nothing is more useless than Godhe doesn’t stroke my foreheaddoesn’t stretch a moist tongueto lustfully lick the bloodfrom every high hill and every mountain peakand under every green tree.[1]Most of the time I divine the innerparts of his body(his sharp resinous odor riseslike the odor of sex)find him in the blue reflecting from the…
Two Poems by Eddy Jordan from Vol. 9

Theatre for Realtors An afternoon for burning, we lookin houses.A chance to makesome theatre for realtorswe say, realtorsare people too we think.We talkloud, walk wide, itch our invisible beards together. What do you think honey? It’s nice, I mean, but the kitchen? Kitchens can be redone. Sure, but— The lighting is nice. The lighting is—…
Poems & Mixed Media by Jeffrey Grunthaner from Vol. 9

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Revisions For the moment he does summertime with an alexandrine mounted in air,inscribed in a space of appropriation—a hundred-foot colossus in black colorsof the sea, or sea anemone from an immensely high beam leaping down with agreat flourish of dust. Rode into focus on a saddleless little…
From Vol. 9: Two Bird Quizzes by Rose Hunter

Albatross Quiz Various species of albatross cana. circumnavigate the globeb. fly to the moonc. become curses and symbols of atonement To make it through the doldrums, albatrosses musta. be one of the smaller speciesb. use more energyc. acquire a positive attitude; push through it Those who have not seen an albatross in the flesh includea.…