Category: The Last Word

Poetry Excerpt: From Words in Danger of Falling Out of the Vocabulary by Eric Lindley & Joe Milazzo

Freightv.1. To inscribe, write or otherwise make marks that are to be read (more properly, read back) in non-linear fashion. To write a text that is both an Eulerian trail and a magic square.2. To mumble from the heart.3. To tabernacle under the umbels. To retire to the weeds to mildew the saccharine and honey…
Two Poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, Newly Translated by Jefferey Samoray

Translator’s note: the originals of both poems were first published in the Apollinaire collection Le Guetteur mélancolique (The Melancholic Watchman). To the best of my knowledge, my translations represent their first appearance in English. Tristesse de l’Automne Vous êtes le soldat de toutes les bontésA vous voir la douleur tremble fuit et s’étonneVoyez votre départ…
“Theatre and Science,” a Postscript Chant by Antonin Artaud, translated by Peter Valente

An exhibition of Antonin Artaud’s paintings occurred on July 4, 1947, at the Galerie Pierre in Paris. Artaud had arranged an event on the first night but it was not a success and so he prepared a second event and decided that it would only by invitation only. He prepared the text, “Theatre and Science”…
“Il Divino”: A Hybrid Travelogue by Brandi George

And there was Michelangelo, the famous Renaissance painter who I worshipped as a child, writing his name over and over on the pages of my notebook, as if the meaning of life was there in the syllables: Michelangelo Michelangelo Michelangelo Mich-el-ang-el-o I grew up on a farm, and the only books I had access to…
Three Original Prose Poems by Michael Robins

On Solitude What can only be a perfect phrase, hurried on the back of a receipt, subsequently caught in the wind & flown forever away. Your eyes are not what they were, imperfect & especially in the morning before gravity once more proves us little. First to sit in the reglazed tub, its waters rise…
New Poetry by Matthew Johnson: “My Front Yard in Summer”

The Moon felt like a tingly blur on my skin, And as it gradually slid down my shoulder through my forearm,I tried to smack at it like it was a marsh mosquito, Or an arcade game of whack-a-mole. We soft tossed Wiffle balls when the sun went down,And the whistle of the breeze passing through the hollow,…
Poetry by Sarah Fawn Montgomery: “Wading”

Father taught me craftwas the way to catch fish from a lureminnow shining. Hope was a fool’s lesson.Skill was flesh hung from a hook, casteasily into indifferent water. I pulled bodies breathlessfrom safety to shore, watched rainbows thrashat my muddied boots. Flaking flesh from brittlebone I feasted when full. Sometimes I tossed bodiesback into the…
Poetry by Alexandra Burack: “Any Second Chance of a Town”

We small-town dead crabgrass over the cracked bluewalls of the grange, where the post-mistress deliversdead letters beaming with flora of flourishing landsin the upper-right corner. Our young always meantto go there, those parks and strip malls outstretchedbeyond the frames our portraits wilt inside. If onlyvo-ag folk knew crops the way nanas knew suffering,that perfect loam…
Three Emotive Essays by Sandra Simonds

Scientists Recognize 27 Emotions and One of Them Is… Confusion No one knows the difference between prose and poetry and if someone says they do, send them to my living room. I sat in Mary Ruefle and Michael Burkard’s living room. Mary handed me a glass of green tea, told a strange history. Once, she…