Tag: Poetry

“our next nominee should remember”: A Six-Poem Suite by Michael Chang

our next nominee should remember ne-VAD-daalways moisturizehand sanitizer is your friendand clorox, for when you get to the oval officecheck what city you’re innever wrestle with pigs. you both get dirty and the pig likes it.look out for numero unoavoid kitchenslose the friends from back homefail oftenthe opposite of armor is curiosityif you do the…
“The Man Who Smells of Lemons”: A Poem from the Future by Jude Marr

The man who smells of lemons dresses in brown and red. He stands, still as a bleeding tree, in a city parking lot. Every day he plants himself in his usual spot, where tarmac cracks radiate outward from his feet, like roots. Every day he stands and waits for a white-hot sun to crack open…
Three Verses from the Vortex(t): Poetry from the Future by Jake Syersak

Identity Vortex [ “Can Rivers Be People Too? : Inside the Radical Movement to Gain Rights for Ecosystems—and Save the Environment.” (THE NEW REPUBLIC: May. 9. 2018) ] that this garden should fall may it fall less the weight of a sigh & more the weight of scythes the rivers read the lips of…
“Ghost Tree,” a concrete visual poem by Tara Campbell for Haunted Passages

InMuirWoodsthere areredwood treesthat are completelywhite, lacking allchlorophyll. They’re called ghost trees, and theydot the forest, ivory boughsglowing against a backgroundof cinnamon bark and pine-needle green.Because they don’t have chlorophyll these albino trees aren’t able tophotosynthesize. They can’t producetheir own food, relying instead on nutrientsfrom the redwoods around them, absorbed throughan underground network of roots and…
Bad Survivalist: Five Plane Crashes by Chance Dibben

The Disappeared The airliner is not at the bottom of the ocean. Nor is it blown to bits over a 1000-mile radius of uninhabited water. No one’s dead. Hostage situation perhaps, the airliner flown to a dark forest, stored for a ransom that never comes. Maybe the passengers are contented. Maybe they will reappear in…
Four Poems by Schyler Butler

If Forced to Join Maleatra Montanez know that he will sayyour legs burst wide like syrup pouredhis throat the drain what was he to dobut unload blame ontoyour blackstrap skinslaughter within youwhat little dignityremained, boy childof yours in the cornerforever tamed, anotherreceptacle of shame What the Devil Tells Me I wouldn’t blame your fatheror the…
Lee Patterson: Two Essay Poems for Bad Survivalist

an essay about funerals I want to set a car on fire, set guns on fire, set love on fire—grow skin so crimson we call it fire. I want to grow a more giving heart, set it on fire, watch what crumbles crumble. trumpets blare against the wall. a temple falls, a medicine cabinet cracks…
“Onyx Egg”: Poetry from The Future by Caleb Nelson

someday things will be the worst they’ve ever beennothing will be all right essentially everything will suckthe most it’s ever sucked I’ve been trying to preparefor this impending suckage by holding one blue onyxegg in my hands while I sleep under the lumberingthunder of another winter’s calibrated dream call it whatever you want it’s okay…
“all gorgeous objects found in the terror of your past”: A Poem from The Future by Jeff Pearson

1. Ongoing whispers in your head. 2. Your howls.3. All memorials for something.4. You do not succeed in hefting up this bulk of matted fur.5. The building of something and the razing of another.6. Your taste of salt unsettled. 7. You pour out hieroglyphics of a hundred handprints, / the Fremont Indian Ruins of transpired…