Category: Poetry

From Vol. 9: Three Prose Poems by Susan L. Leary

Joyful Poem, with Nearsightedness We enter the world able to detect the earliest upheavals of atmosphere. Each morning, the thousand strokes of dawn refusing to settle into sky. & for what? To stay or flee an invented storm? To make lists of things mourned before their arrival? We do this, even, with the edged infinities…
From Vol. 9: Two Poems by Glenn Shaheen

Cannon Fruit flies numerous and can Ibring myself to kill them to ruintheir structures of flight theydiminish our standard of livingthey are minor irritants ourstandard of living already lowfrom years of part time teachingour teeth yellowing our clothesbecoming more out of stylepoetry only works for the wealthyor the white my friends assureme that being Arab…
From Vol. 9: “Creature and the Once-a-Year-House,” a poem by Michael Sikkema

9 shotgun barrels are wrapped around a beech tree, hunting party nowhere in site, one truck engine still running, almost out of gas 7 deer walk backwards out of pines as their seams split to mist Creature figures tiny wolves inside their head leak black milk, sniffs out blood on a salt lick Coming home…
From Vol. 9: “Shame (A Spell to Forget),” poetry by Charlotte Covey

This is a darker magic.This is crawling through his door at four a.m. and begginghim to take a bite. This is slipping between lucid and not, hoping he will finishme off. Somewhere, idly, I am thinkingI don’t even like him. Somewhere, not here, that matters. Somewhere, you arefalling asleep soundly, while he is taking offmy…
From Vol. 9: “Statement of Purpose,” a poem by Nicholas Bon

It’s important for you to know that I’m a fucking mess, that so often the drummer in the corner is too loud for this polite conversation. There are people, even now, asking me what I can bring to the feast. I left my hands at home & can’t get my shit together. How…
From Vol. 9: Four Poems by Emily Blair

An IUD Is a Silver Bullet That Could Kill Me so I’m not taking recommendations at this time.Instead this body is as this body doessmoke sometimes. I quit and quit quitting. In the dark of a power outage,I live alone and lie awake in the silence of a thousand people panickinginside our little homes, 5…
Two Poems from The Future: Jessica Morey-Collins

The Day We Learned Most of us immediately pulled off our shoes and popped our shirt-buttons, released the thunder of our hearts to quarrel with the administration. The teenagers who found it had been up to teenage no-good—pushing each other in a stolen shopping cart, gulping begged beer and whooping through the sidewalked night. They…
Three Poems from The Future: Caely McHale

Mona Lisa My hands are the last human thing about me.I keep my fingernails pink.I arrange them soft like the Mona Lisa. I imagine delivering a baby, scaled and cold.Scoop the mucus from his throat!My hands are the last human thing about me. My brother’s hands have gone to shit,Dark and spotted from a magnified…
Side A: “Taxonomy of Amnesia,” a poem by Tam Nguyen

Taxonomy of Amnesia I swear I’d trade my body to remember and instantly regret it. Ma and Ba—children of sweat-glazed faces, too-short ribs. Their spines the bridges connecting no worlds. Am I your son at all?The answer a teethmark left on a just-ripened bomb. Anywhere on earth my body will be hijacked by explosions, even…