Tag: Poetry

“Black. Star. Pieces.”: Side A Poetry by Matthew Cooperman

Black. Star. Pieces. —for Rosmarie Waldrop 1 The gathering of parts to their parts, will there be gathering of parts? Time, in a word, reading. As in, where did the song begin? Go on. Singing the terrible truth of the world, a griot through an open window. Something happened on the day he died, I…
The Future: “In Another Lifetime,” from a crown of sonnets by Tomas Nieto

In a basement in what was known as Seattle, a watchmakersolders a metal wing onto a robot bird, springing it to lifewith the weight of gear as engine—motion as ignition. Thisis the closest thing to impulse without nerve, thrill, or grief.In another lifetime, fortune tellers read love linesthrough circuits and wires, speaking wonders from matrix,destiny…
Four Poems by Joel Anthony Harris

Prince Varmint Stops a Viking Siege I’ll never forget the Bastille Day, how it stormed the countrytown like a kettle of vultures. Yeomen toiled in fallow fields hacking the soil with their harrows.From the north hailed a drab dragonship that fiddled the still moat.There he was the wretched sprite, the scoundrel: Sam the Terrible!His eyes were…
From “devours itself”: a mixed media collaboration for The Future by Alexandra Mattraw & Adam Thorman

*Ed.’s Note: click on image to view larger size. The Image Devours Itself 1 Adam Thorman If only my mouth it is that I will turn, seaward. Glow the apple in your phone we stand cliffside. Click pictures : Blue lace borders what isn’t. Cyclone, chain, center beach caving. Unseen I in the dream you…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Romana Iorga

Fairy Tale After James Schuyler I heard a rooster crow three times this morning.What does it mean, whom have I betrayed?Each day I walk toward something with a shore,or else, with a clearing. Humans use treesto surround their emptiness, their viscous needfor each other. I think I may still be a human.In the forest, no…
“O Pen the State/open the say/ate the stated,” a Side A Poem by Tony Mancus

O Pen the State/open the say/ate the stated We are always one link from disaster blinking the clouds top the mountains like thought bubbles from the earth with a silhouette of a person crossing above the road some wearing a reality backdrop/terminus and beginning/eventually the body forgets how to swallow the mirror in every eye shaving reality drops behind its work zone sign blinking cream true what roots we…
“State of Decay”: A Georgia Poets’ Roundtable

Regionalisms abound in accounts of contemporary poetry, and the American South remains one of the most complex and productive of those literary regions. Yet, with the contemporary scene saturated with MFA and PhD degrees in creative writing, young poets often uproot and move cross-country to enroll in graduate programs. Add in the compounding factor that…
Connor Fisher: Two Poems for Haunted Passages

An Aphid Complex An aphid complex emerged frombeneath the burning barn. Horses were theprophets of agriculture. I threw a tractor overa phalanx of shells that, in their elation,carved elaborate, infinitesimal initialsinto the desolate arena of sand. My knife is in midair. I am jugglingthe brutal levees of a drowned city. The wellreflects an image of…
“The Sky Never Left the Sky”: Tiffany Troy Interviews Mai Der Vang

Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award in Poetry, and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Lannan Literary…