Category: Poetry

Two Poems by Linette Reeman

As Donald Trump Is Being Inaugurated a girl and i stagger out of a tear-cloud and shakeinto each others’ mouths. there is no one i loveout of necessity, but this is a love hatched undera sky bursting and marred by flames. a week later, the joke is still good. we started dating becausea riot bloomed…
Four Poems by Katie Hibner

Smart Varmints You talk about how they’re smart varmints: they crawl out of a splintered helix,grow up crust-pluckingfor gratuities. They want to sic their reliquaries on ours,semantically blitzthrough our amber waves. They’re not cute and they’re not cubedbitesize;they gnaw on our breaded trade winds. You talk about howbots admit them through our firewalls,ignoring their flagrantly-laundered…
Five Poems by Alia Hussain Vancrown

Alif. Lām. Mīm. Morning’s glorious sclera peels night like peach skin.The casual tugging of a hangnail accentuates each hamzah. There is pain in meaningless recitation—when the bearded preacher arrives at the house before the milkman, it’s too earlyfor children to memorize sounds unable to be translated, struck into meaning from only his well-meaningbamboo discipline stick.…
Poetry: Five Found-Word Works of Resistance by J.I. Kleinberg

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. consume the unbearable this unwelcome we lost words J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, freelance writer, and co-editor of Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington (Other Mind Press, 2015). A Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2016 Ken Warfel Fellowship, her found poems have appeared recently…
Two Poems by Virginia Konchan

Insurrection Sonnet Night is irascible, like the words of hoary men who rule the world with their fistful of dirty dollars. Go ahead, fire me. Because personality emerges in the moment of dissent, as every toddler and Bartlebian figure knows. Before no, we are an unresisting marsh of mmm-hmm and yes sir. A veritable swampland.…
Poetry: “A Slow Pickling” by Tara Boswell

a drowned and legless female {insert your animal here}how sweet watch her commitment to being a life raftno just a life vest c’mon you always wanted my hands around your neck right after I flip the kitchen tableupending everything we were preparing for breakfasttake notes one clove of garlic in each cheek take your medicine …
Poetry: “Civil War Re-enactment: Kure Beach, NC, January 2017” by Suzzanna Matthews-Amanzio

The artillery drumfire of a civil war re-enactment—a frenzy of smallbirds, cries syncopated, rise—scattershot from the twisted branches Trees lie beyond the dunes—Carolina live oak—from the beach we seethe canopy stunted, flat—feruled by headwinds There is history that seethes beneath the sea—that keeps lapping at theland Shading our eyes we can see the shore stretching…
Poetry: “The Beautiful Ex, Who Was Once on TV” by Kyle Kineman

I still smell the sweat of machineson your chest, the grease of your night-shiftpalm, you were always oil on canvas,a James Dean in altar boy blues. I knowI’ve looked at you too many times latelyin the photos you’ve posted. You look good—your wet white shirt outlining every church boybulge as you emerge from some Malibu…
Poetry: Sarah Duncan’s “Umpqua”

*For those killed by Chris Harper-Mercerat Umpqua Community College The school is closed. The school is open tobodies, warm and laughing. The school isonly open to ghosts. There are 10 ghosts 9wounded, 10 dead 320 millionwarm, wounded. The gun is coldand apologetic. The gun is warmand laughing in cold hands, white boyhands in a…