Tag: Poetry

Bad Survivalist: Three Poems by Rikki Santer

Alteration Love Finds Neighbors turn into bears, golden vanilla coats, curriedyawns, yellow teeth. We stroll through backyards, aroundboxwood fences. At the party we hunker into a worn couchinside a screened front porch. It’s a plague, someone mutters,wash your hands in ways you’ve never done before.In the morning, I’m a banshee snoring. Bursts of tiny breathsagainst…
Guffy Bergman: Three Poems for Bad Survivalist

Opening Holes of Escape in the Tight Fabric[1] Dirt settles into mounds around our feet,brown hard-contrasting with the boom-pinkcolor we imagine for our bones—yes,it’s like that, images standing innot for the thought but that thought’s tenor,jackrabbits twitching at the entranceto the hutch, taking wordless breaks, and the great blue herons, commonin the creek, flash their…
Emma Aylor: “Ossuary,” a poem for Haunted Passages

On the farm, our border collie lab killedsmall animals. I’d tell people they died from Joy. Once a groundhogjust next to its burrow, head open to skimmed winter sky and the pinkof its brain blurred and scraped at the edges; twice our hens, bodies stretchedin the cage corner, eyelids purpled and closed. Some she could…
Haunted Passages: “The Unhaunted Poem” by Kim Sousa

X-Files child, Ialways wanted to brush up against the paranormal.Grant me a final girl foggy day. Though, in this only and on-forever life, I never found any ghost outside the mirror. Only bare fruit trees,controlled burns, abandoned hives, their capped and long-dry combs. Only strangerswith cheeks I kiss out of obligation, not gentleness. Their go-with-God…
Bad Survivalist: Tam Nguyen’s attempted poem “2020’s Impressions”

Halfway through the year of 2020 1 About the flood season in 1978: My father’s boat was traveling to the drylands in the far South to collect some edible grass for the starving cows at home. The river was narrow enough for the melaleuca arms to remind him of guerrillas’ sneaky talks and gunfire. It…
Danny Caine: Three Flavortown Poems from Vol. 9

Last Will & Testament When I die bury me at Randall Park Mallbeside the pebbled fountain where coiny wateronce bubbled, by the stage where Tiffany sneakersonce danced and twirled. For the service set out rowsof Brookstone massage chairs so the whir of the Shiatsuhums as my Auntie Anne delivers a prayer through saltytears. Let her…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Common Tragedy” by Sylvan Lebrun

It wasn’t their fault, the fire. The last time the sheriff’s department spoke to the newspapers, they said the investigation was still ongoing, nothing conclusive. So it could have been anyone or anything—bad weather patterns or a rancher burning their trash. Even if it could be traced it back to Nora and Chloe, they still…
Bad Survivalist Poem: “Let nothing touch the ground” by Sam Rush

The best way to treat bedbugs scream while screaming wait until you die / The best way move drive fast enough to outrun them they can’t fly if you run out of gas scream while you scream wait wait until you die let nothing touch the ground / The best way to treat bedbugs diatomaceous…
Poetry: “Acceptable Risk” by Tara Campbell

“Acceptable Risk” is a response to the “no-knock” police raid in Louisville on March 13 that ended in the shooting death of 26-year-old African-American EMT Breonna Taylor. Police say they knocked and identified themselves, but Walker and other witnesses in the building say they did not. The officers were not using body cameras. As reported…