Tag: Poetry

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…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Why Not the Cherry Tree” by Matthew James Friday

with its dark web of branchesoffering galaxies of darkening orbs. At Idiot’s Grace Farm – Pick Your Ownmy middle-school nephew proudlyconquers ladders and black hole branchesone star at a time. I stand below, an Odin steadying the ladder,belly-bucket layering with half-heartedlabors, one eye on him, the otheron cherries bouncing below. We consume half the universein…
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…
“Bones Blush Brilliant in the Soft Light”: A Conversation with Virgil Suárez

It’s a couple of months to poetry month as I write this. Back when I was a kid poet reading in secret in my bedroom or, later on, rocking it on the Lower East Side, poetry didn’t have a month. Or, if it did, I didn’t know about it. It would have seemed silly to…
Poetry from The Future: “Flood Warning” by Constance Clark

It is incredibly sad Rainwater sits on top of concave dirtdressed in a ripples of amusement Steel raindrops crushed cattails at pondsideand made them learn to swim last night Nowhere Sunna, or Khepri,Amaterasu, or Ra to blot the earth The glistening fern bow, soaked,spilling stardust guts We stare with no replystanding in purple rubber boots…
The Future Has Poetry: “The Year of the Buzzard” by Bray McDonald

It was the Year of the Buzzard, and everything was dying not to die.The last of the clinging leaves had fallen,and the trees were stark with despair.The sky could only croak at dawn.Its throat was clogged, and its eyes itchedwith the dusty and rusty particlesthat rained across the horizon, and bloated the suninto a stunted…
Side A Poem: “Anti-Ars Poetica” by Jonathan Memmert

Anti-Ars Poetica There is no poetry in a shrapnel wound that refuses to heal … No enjambment in a lifelong amputation / No metaphor inside the guns aimed & trigger cocked No simile flies from the aerial carpet bombings No alliteration as tank tracks cross borderlines No allegory hidden in a drone’s surveillance Mines laid…
Poetry for Bad Survivalist: “What a World” by Joshua Stanek

The wind did devotions through the gorge when you arrived.The sun brighter and wet seasons more bountiful. Mountain lions track deer over the swift flow of interstateson bridges made for the deer, the lion, the blackberry bush, and the bobcat with a wild hare in its jaw. You were bornupon a communication boom, you see.…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Jenny Grassl

Woman’s Mappa Mundi—The Promontory Imprint a bubbling gone rogue my song summons hounds of heaven there are no sailors to risk sirens sea pig rides the waves my lap subsumes blood chambers of the deep fins of all the fathersa dead man’s float cracked and crashed by a shopping cart ship mast skews vertebrae in…