Category: Poetry

Three Poems by William Lessard

<en passant> the hammer i raised to my father’s skullholds open the bathroom window history is sometimes the breezethat enters through the daisy curtain in the moments before that momenti saw myself a flyinching a stippled surface joy was insect glorya moment rubbingeyelash legs in the history of survivor artthere is the theme of wishing…
Two Poems by Zach Mueller

Broke Bottles, Gold Models There’s no sign sayingchoke saltwaterdrowning, but that’show it happens—the absenceof a sign. The thingis what it is.Let’s be honest.You should gulp it like strangers eye-fuckinga bank teller.See how honestlyour throats reject quartzand feldspar as thoughwe abominateislandswith our lips. Don’t encourage.Don’t hang it up on a fishhook.These ghost crabsfear flashlightsbecause sunlight is…
“The Inner Eye Tattooed,” a poem by Marc Vincenz

(1) Looking in like a snail, my nose crawls against glass. How the view alters up close and the breath a mountainous fog against matter’s impermeable will. Isn’t this the color of pure silence— that rainbowed tint when night swallows reflections? (2) In the nothingness of the primordial, words written before words are known and…
Three Poems by Ace Boggess

Schoolteacher Elegy scanning the obituaries this morning I seemy junior high English teacher the one who ignored me while I slept or pretended to sleepwith head posed on arm pressed to the desk then introduced me to Hugo the French Shakespearewith Quasimodo’s bones cradling a rose in Esmeralda’s grave I was a child in hiding…
“Monster,” a GIF comic poem by Matthew Kramer

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Matthew Kramer is a, writer, illustrator, and artist in Providence, Rhode Island. He is an MFA candidate in Literary Arts at Brown University, where he teaches comics. His artwork can be viewed at matthewckramer.com and canttakemeanywhere.com. “The comic poems are a series of soliloquies and dialogues in which everyday aphorisms, thoughts, and…
Three Poems by Jeff Tigchelaar

There’s This Thing and I don’t know what it isbut I haul it all aroundbecause it’s attached to my hand. There’s this cloth that’s wrapped tightaround my arm: bright orange cloth all the waypast my elbow and affixedto some mesh wiring.A lot of mesh wiring.I have to drag it behind me. It’s like I’ve gota…
Essay Hybrid: “Introduction” by JoAnna Novak

IBegin with a lie. Life-stuck or stasis, miles orminds: unleash the lies.Bark them off. Begin un-urgent, unringed, grub-nailed and urgey, youngenough to be buyable,looking on labels. IIOnce I wended. A toA; after that—a curvet,a barreling. Set fromthe capital and droveborders over-fast,over-hard, o’er thevalley; his old car wasrazed, a bothered stateof dust. Mountainsabutted my path andrunaway…
Two Poems by Jill M. Talbot

A Picture of Me When I Was Young and Dead iThey say this picture is pretty,This picture of which I was dead for.They like me this way. Taking a photo with a laptopAfter a wedding. It’s already gone—I blinked, I moved.I grew teeth, I found a pulse.Am no longer pretty— The way the cashier took…
Four Poems by Martin Ott

Dead Man Lying The difference between life and death is the same broken line between truth and lies. Time defines both. History holds the mantras of liars and recasts them in our history books. The walking dead has never been about zombies. Our reporters hurry to unearth time machines before the damned redraw the circles…