Tag: Poetry

Matt L. Roar & Niina Pollari Discuss Their New Poetry Books, MY WAR and Path of Totality

I first read Niina Pollari’s Path of Totality on a plane and was immediately torn between giving into the book, allowing myself to weep my way from JFK to SFO, or to pull myself together and not thoroughly weird-out the passenger in the neighboring seat. Niina’s book is funny and smart and sad and intimate enough…
Poetry for Haunted Passages: “The Deer Girls” by Janet McAdams

The sisters wear white doeskin dresses and moccasins quilled and beaded, not by their own hands, but by old ladies with fingers toughened by a hundred punctures. They’ll dance through the soles in a single night. This tale has need of a clever young man to find the valley where the twelve sisters go every…
Two Poems for Flavor Town USA by Anne Panning

The Butter Principle Life is like cold, hard butter. A pebble in your shoe.A stubborn child who won’t release the Snicker bar inthe checkout line. An axe to grind against the iceberg. But.How about that shy, self-deprecating toast burnt black? Theknife hacks away at like it a he-man. But. Cold butter standsup for the underdog.…
Side A: Kristina Andersson Bicher Reads Poems from Marie Lundquist’s I walk around gathering up my garden for the night

Situating Marie Lundquist Lundquist’s taut, image-driven, aphoristic poems speak in a contemporary voice but nonetheless offer clarity and stillness in a frenetic world. With a gimlet eye, Lundquist considers the essential mysteries of memory, childhood, love, longing, and existence. While the emotional terrain explored is intense, devastating even, Lundquist’s tone remains at arms-length. The voice…
Poetry: Four Sonnets by Brendan Lorber

I believe in science and also Who gets closer the further they get? Everyone believes in science and alsowhy time calls itself a spell The magic of returning to morning consciousnessis that we do when the reason we do is super unavailable until much later and is often the answer a spider trapped in larger spider’s…
Original Poem: “A Message to Meg, from the Dead of Night” by Joe O’Brien

I’m texting you this anachronisticpainting of our favorite TV characterto remind us what memories feel like I’m following this feed where they mash up old Simpsons gagswith other old Simpsons gags and then mash those up with Sopranos quotesso I might wring every last droplet of joy that I canfrom whatever I can still wrap…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Cravings,” an original sonnet by Molly McGrane

Torn from the ashes we haveold women come to remind us that skinny looks good in dresses but not onfaces. Die with a naked mole rat visage or die of diabetes with a #7 double.In junior high I ate cheese until grease dripped with my tears down my chins. Retirement will hide the animalistic tendencies…
Three Original Poems by Lauren Ireland for Haunted Passages

Serotonin Mountain They will call you bravebut what they mean is scary.Falling down the mountainis so much harder than clawing up.Summiting is not a verb I recognize.You must not change your life.When you change your lifeyou ruin someone else’s.You are a rockslide of terror.One look backward andthey will be where you are. I am a…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “Disrupted” by Ansley Clark

That is not a windowbut a circle cut in concrete the desire to consume smoldering like an expensive holidaywhat I have been for a long time becomes real as I walk through glass and metal landscapes the taste of badness in my throat several bags filled with receipts to avoid the building’s shadows which…