Tag: Poetry

“A Glinting Sliver That Can Cut Flesh”: A Collaborative Interview with Peter Ramos & Kim Chinquee

Kim Chinquee’s SNOWDOG and Peter Ramos’ Lord Baltimore are both due out on January 15, 2021, with Ravenna Press. Chinquee and Ramos are English Department colleagues at SUNY-Buffalo State. Chinquee is the author of seven collections, most recently SNOWDOG, due out in January 2021 with Ravenna Press. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and…
“Requiem: Fin Inn,” a Flavor Town USA poem by Avery Gregurich

for M.T. Let’s debate ovals, acoustics, the moral virtues ofcurveballs. We’ll do it loud, live, staggering atopthe trusses of the river bridge. We’ll poke our facesin front of the lights off the dam for effect. A sunfloweron the shore will serve as moderator. First we’ll finish thesefrog legs, but I’ll give you cheap smokes, sure,…
Bad Survivalist: “On Catfish,” a poem by Ryan Keeney

At nine, Dad taught me how to gut a catfish. Thick-skulled, even out of water they are survivors, known to flop and thrash for hours before succumbing to suffocation. If catfish could speak what kind of wretched pleas would drift from their cavernous mouths? The first step: nail the catfish to a board. The nail…
Three Haunted Passages Poems by Sheila Dong

fruit i adopt a cat from the shelter,then forget it in a box.the way it stareswhen i remember. the wayits head rolls off,a softened apple. noblood or rot.just another donation.on the night bus i feelsick so i get offtwo stops early to walkin the light-lack, touchingchainlink and weeds. thingsfall from branchesand roll toward me.the bus…
Matthew Feinstein: Two Fraternity Poems for Bad Survivalist

Portrait of Pledge Being Left in the Middle of Nowhere on Shrooms It’s Fall. The Pledge Master has me blindfoldedin his car. We are going somewhere. A place I hopethat’s not too hard for my mother to find. But I canalready feel the rumble of winding roads beneath me,and although I’m mostly blind, specks ofmoonlight…
“Menacing Territory”: An Interview with Olivia Cronk by Logan Berry

Olivia Cronk’s Womonster is a psychedelic exploration of the “impossibility of a coherent self.” Via several poetical modes—imagistic, confessional, gothic, and surrealist—Cronk’s language transforms as it encounters genre tropes from campy horror and detective movies. Her vivid imagination is foregrounded but firmly rooted in the material realities of working and raising her child. The book is unlike…
“Sirens of Architecture”: Alexandra Mattraw & Jake Syersak on Their Debut Books of Poetry and Beyond

Alexandra Mattraw is a Berkeley poet and critic who has authored several books. small siren is available at The Cultural Society (2018), and two of her chapbooks can be found at dancing girl press (2013, 2017). Other poems and reviews have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Jacket2, Interim, VOLT, and elsewhere. A mother and ecofeminist, Alexandra curates an art-centric writing…
Ricky Ray Poem: “The Dream” for Haunted Passages

In which the monster emerged sludgehearted and fond of hares.And triplets were born of a wish that blew itself apart.Candleflame ignored the wind.Her face, thirty years on ice,the one my waking mind can’t find in the crowd.Water in the streets so high you could swim.I was a woman.I was a wolf. I could hear hunger…
Fred Gerhard: Four Poems for Haunted Passages

Chill November On a chill November afternoonmemory of colorclings to skylike pitch dark twigs alivereaching for a summer sunlong gone a poorly dreamt expanseof slate fogpearly mistfar away and departingour livesour graves leaves space forautumn hymns in thelow quiet tonethat falling breezesknowand hum where we would gobefore we let goand throwour shivering limbs aliveto the…