Tag: Poetry

Bad Survivalist: “Love Poem (with Subtle Anti-Whaling Message)” by Glen Armstrong

I am writing to you with ambergrisand cream, in a style too clumsy to be a hat or even a sunburn.The world has its preferences and I have mine: you are valued.After dinner, I wonder about silence and whales,secrets and beauty that festers then ferments.I am writing to you with a synthetic ambroxide and soy…
Side A Poem: “Wrong Turn” by Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez

Wrong Turn There’s a dead catsprawled on the side of the road. No official burial ceremonybut woodchips and straw spread by snakes with a soul.The sky will be cobalt soon now it’s peach.Is there a blueprint for melancholy? I wish I turned the cat to the palm trees.No one should have to face their killer…
Three Flavor Town USA Poems by Kathleen Hellen

every animal is broken differently cook it slow, the butcher says, like jazz or countrywestern—doesn’t matter something you can dance to—something you can masterlike chief cook and bottle-washer, recognize that parrot is a noun, that parrot is a table mannerthat you always start with definition, recognize the cuts as hangers flap meat Denver steaks coulotte,…
“Strings Astray:” A Poem for Haunted Passages by Lindsay Donovan

You pitter on your bike across the boulevard, past the litter, the small dog jackets,and tour bus flyers. You bought your bike for LA cheap, it brakes properly and night signalsbut its not doing too hot. Too hot out in Venice, you pull up to the driveway, quiet, as you tryto choke down filmy, office…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “Ode to the Beginning of Things Between Us” by Max Lasky

Love is a beetle in the brainsays my horoscope today, whichmakes me think of my wife’schildhood nickname, Beetle, a playon her middle name, Betul, Turkish for virgin, or pure, a nameshe abandoned by the wayside aftersplitting hearts with wedge and sledgehammer, the way experience accrues around firewoodlike dead leaves in the fenced in cornerof our…
Poetry for Flavor Town USA: “Ode to Oil” by Sarah A. Etlinger

To the hot oil sizzling in the pan as I stand hereand make dinner, chicken cutlets, fish cakes, latkes. To the oil that burns and chars the panso I have to scrub it clean, scour black scars, and dump the remainsin an old coffee can kept under the sink like my mother did,to its scent…
“Bruce Lee Does the Cha Cha with My Grandmother in the Seventh Level of the Underworld,” a Haunted Passages poem by Vincent Antonio Rendoni

Often, I think of a young Lee Jun-Fan—just a student at the University of Washington—in the days before he met his wife, entering his prime. I see him swinging his elbows, pushing out hipswith Abuela, also new, out of place& foreign to Seattle at the time. Together, they move up and downthe smoke-filled parlor above…
New Poetry for Flavor Town USA: “Coordinates: Kool-Aid Arctic Grapes” by Avery Gregurich

A slight delicacy: supermarket green grapes covered with Kool-Aid powder, frozen solid, a real “Welcome to Wisconsin” moment where otherwise broke down supper clubs mark the towns, or where they once were. Flavor is preference, but Strawberry Kiwi is best. I had them in Madison the week they’d just culled seventy-two geese and donated their…
New Poetry for Haunted Passages: “Night Terrors” by Mike Bagwell

The trick is to return from somewhereyou haven’t been. This time,I am climbing the buildingon top of the building. I’m ready now. Or, my reflection is.When the night gets sharp enough,it is feminine. It whittles itselfinto underwater caverns. The recipe calls for mirror shardsand a full jar of honey to make it easier.It won’t be…