Category: Poetry

Original Haibun Postcard for Side A: Judson Evans

Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians19 South 22St., Philadelphia,Aug. 25, 1997 Dear Indivisible Duo, I offer you a peak into this carnival tent/cabinet of curiosities,skull by skull: #28: Protestant soldier, suicide by gunshot wound to heart (because of weariness of life) North Hungary #30: Painter, suicide by potassium cyanide (because grief after abandonment by…
Bad Survivalist: Two Poems by Simon Ravenscroft

Emergence / upon clifftop Ever emerging into further con-vergences of perforated selfhood,one alights occasionally on this orthat compelling instant, truth shimmeringin the open apparently … for a time,for a time … before scuttling away againinto the hills to hide beneath the trees.Reflecting back later, nothing isever so convincing as it wasthe first time, back when…
New Prose Poem: “I read that butterflies are losing their color, becoming more muted to blend into their deforested habitats” by Vikki C.

And now they’re sending a search party out looking for wonder. It worries me—are they using the correct searchlight? Will I be missed again? These concerns keep happening—like the continuous tense of fall—bloody maples dredging an exhausted world, where the line between hidden and lost is sodden. Like my mother complaining she could never find…
New Poem: “Girls I’ve Known” by Elaine Equi

S. who even in kindergarten wore a perpetually startled look. K. who of all The Beatles loved Ringo best and claimed the boy she babysat was his illegitimate child. R. who looked like an Indian princess. You knew she’d be pregnant by junior year. B. my boss who was shorter than me, who forced me…
Three Original Poems from If Only in Combat I Find Love by Jack Nancy

So the Carnival Does Not Crash Bikini Jesus of the red hangercome down, you mangeryou’re not meant to be up thereyou poet, come down, you are a boxfor living things, cows, farm animals Picking up lines from the half head goneripping off sweaters from the should be deadnot knowing how to clean themwatering the plastic…
New Poem by Jiwon Choi: “Reading About Prince’s Movie While Conjuring the Sunday Times Crossword and Rote Learning ‘Postcolonial Love Poem’ by Natalie Diaz”

Quest Love calls Ezra Edelman’s nine hour sequence of the Beautiful One looking quiet punching out muses speaking in koans while embracing lace “a cultural service” for Black men We’re in junior high and our parents are too busy to notice we’ve cut school to see a movie at the Olympia movie theater on the…
New Poem by Steven Alvarez: “gelatin silver”

argument w. words less obscure than these bodies in apartments just like these— w. fears like anybody wd have in times as charming—& soft skin & walls doing lousy keeping down wind w. words written w. light into verses i. black & white Y behind X Y’s face contoured & pressing to back of X’s…
Haunted Passages: Three Poems by Suzette Bishop

Strawberry Moon Rises We’re living in a mud house,one main room with a sink,a small galley kitchen off the one room,a bathroom somewhere, presumably.It’s handy to have the extra sinkin the main room but also strange.We have a heavy kitchen table. I look for things we might renovate,casting my eyes around and aroundthe main room,…
Haunted Passages: Four Poems by Oleg Olizev

The Fire You Fed You, with your violent inclination,shattered my stove.Now my oven of love is broken,my cranberry juice blooms across the kitchen tiles,staining the grout like evidence.You called it passion.I call it wreckage. You stuffed rice pudding into the wound,as if its sweetness could cover your crimes.Instead of making love, you used me—your hands,…