Tag: Poetry

“I want a new car, I told you.” a Side A prose poem by Hannah Grieco

I want a new car, I told you. but what I want is to smash the windows of our minivan, to take the chainsaw out of the shed, to push the ignition and hear it sputter and forget for a moment how to run before coming to life, to feel it growl in my hands,…
Side A Poem: “Indigo Froth” by Benjamin Niespodziany

Indigo Frothfor Boris Vian It’s an old robe story. Old folktale. Woman surrounds herself with flowers and dies. Petals wilt. Plates squirm. Mounds gather a mattress of warmth. Acorns made for testing. When she dies, her blood is paper. Here’s some money back, the director replies. The sky is cardboard. Like in the flickers. He…
Peter Valente: “Notes on John Wieners’ ‘A Poem for Painters’” (Selected Poems 1958-1984), written after reading Bill Berkson’s Sudden Address

In “A Poem for Painters,” John Wieners writes: Paul Klee scratched for seven yearson smoked glass, to develophis line, LaVigne says, lookat his face! He who has spentall night drawing mine. In his diary of 1906, Klee wrote about his “reverse glass paintings,”: “Besides, I moved with the utmost zeal on the smoothest surface, on…
Side A Poem: “A Power or Ability of the Kind Possessed by Superheroes” by Kathleen Rooney

A Power or Ability of the Kind Possessed by Superheroes If death is a specter that devours everything, then making friends with death would be a good superpower. What if you had a superpower but it was really banal, like the ability to beat anybody in the world at checkers? My meditation teacher, June, probably…
Anton Pooles: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

He Did Not Listen Now his bones are neatly displayedon a table like a museum piece. “They shine like hard boiled eggs,”his Mother says proudly. Then her tone darkens,“put them back where you found them— let them be a warning to alldisobedient children.” The Creature Beneath the Porch Knock on wood. It followsas I pace…
Haunted Passages: “Swamp Thing Explains How Time Passes in the Middle of Dueling Crises,” a poem by Jack B. Bedell

It’s never a matter of value. When I’m standing at the edge of the cypress grove looking over the coastline, I can tell it’s receding, inching back into the swamp. No doubt the water’s rising. It’ll drown us all. Eventually. It’ll lick away every piece of swamp I stand on. But it’ll do it with…
Side A Poem: “My Breakdown Is Like Buster Keaton Trying to Smile” by Jessie Janeshek

My Breakdown Is Like Buster Keaton Trying to Smile I keep looking through binocularsover and out toward the rivercalories are negotiablebut in every rendition I have a black eye. It’s all about pratfallsmy globe-sized stomachgarroted or garrulousand/or love before breakfast. Oct/Nov adjust the knobit always rains in my dreamseven the one where I’m swallowed into…
“Another Space We Share”: Hillary Leftwich Talks to Poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum

Poet and Editor Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum took time to answer questions on his latest poetry collection, Visiting Hours (Texas A&M University Press), and how myth-making, space, and honoring the voices of those who have departed all play a central part in not only his writing but how he views the relationships around him. McFadyen-Ketchum is the…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “The Sugar Eaters” from THE DUST THAT SINGS by Alex Gregor

they was sittin round the fireplace sippin tea & eatin fruitcake on crushed velvet divans with bronze claw feet on oriental rugs, when the maid walked in with a silver tray weighed down with a heaping mound of sugar cubes. the headmaster of the school, seated between the principals, waved her hand in the maid’s…