Tag: Poetry

The Future Has Poetry: “Tuesdays”‘ by R.C. Blenis

The boot descends. The wet thudof sole on skin, the small suckof leather peeling from flesh;the metronome of Mondays.Air squeezed sideways through a mouththat used to make music. The wheeze,the wet whistle, the catch between blows,pressure pressing into softness, the bodybeaten to a beat, a blood-beat drumming downto this dumb thud, this pulp, this pulse.This.…
Three Poems of Bad Survivalism: Sebastian Hunter

The Vintner I saw a lot of miracles on my descent to the gardenInnumerable rodents in crotches of carmine redstained with halos and television antennaeStand close enough and you can pick up messages for the unemployed,calls from one desolate sibling to anotherAt the base of the alder lazes the young vintner,preoccupied with “filtration” and what…
Poetry from the Future: “salamander exfil” by Dennis Hinrichsen

slept in the hostilewoke in the hostile buffalo nickel on a hard rail glooming more and morethe gesture jackals behind every door midnight moonlight with too much metal in it when will it be cowboy again? lariats of oxygenand a straight shot wordwordwordnot this crawl space antler cowering I am myself as potent as a…
New Poetry by David M. Alper: “Press 3 to Listen Again”

You have one new message. It came in at sunsetwhen the sky was a smeared fruit color. Hello. Here I am—your first language,the one you planted in the school playground,the rusty swing set, the dusk train stop. I remember your lips sometimes.When they were learning, they forgot me.How teeth molded me like freshly baked bread…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “Aubade to the Weight of a Soul in the Morning Air” by Jenny Maaketo

I packedso high in the lightI practice for whatuntil what is an objectTo cast becomes invisible To cradle light spindle refracts rays switchgrass the grass switch my wrist with you and to hold notuntil as lightly as I find I among the mountains air I will to be you here the cast touch is caught…
Three Original Poems by Choiselle Joseph

Hummingbird, or, First Blood at Witching Hour The night I first retched hummingbirdfeathers my mother said it was normal. Two a.m., both hands tremble-clingingto porcelain, the beak lodgedin my abdomen. Propeller wingsbuzzed against lining, bowlfilling with bile. She stroked my back, okra-slimylike a newborn’s cheek. Peachand lime-green clods of plumagelaunched from my throat. You get…
New Side A Poetry by Min Woo Chong: “I dare not look out”

the exit lights along the aisle are blinking red.red like the sunset over ocean outside, streamingin through the window I don’t dare look out.out, as the light leans in, the cabin is gold,gold framing for one final sunlit bloodstained picture. that bloodstained picture of the man beside mepraying for a golden miracle from the sky…
“Visiting the Dilapidated with Hope in Your Heart”: Abbie Kiefer Interviews Poet Kelly Gray

Kelly Gray’s Dilapitatia is, in many ways, a book about haunting—how lineage keeps shaping the present, how the dead remain with us, how our minds and bodies keep returning to the mysteries that possess us. I recently talked with Gray about her collection. Gray is the author of Instructions for an Animal Body (Moon Tide…
Side A Poetry: “Contrary” by Alina Zollfrank

We packed bottomless bags, sharpened ↑ stubby pencils, ticked none of the boxes, choiced □□□□multiplicity, essayed our thesis-loathing hearts out, regurgitated forgettable dates and wrong facts, and ran ○○○ circles around a track that put us in our ꜚ ꜚ ꜚ corners. We trusted suspiciously, argued respectfully, attended religiously except when we weren’t. We borrowed…