Tag: Poetry

“A Growing Crisis,” a Presidential erasure by Tara Campbell

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Tara Campbell (taracampbell.com) is a fiction editor at Barrelhouse and an MFA candidate at American University. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, b(OINK), Booth, Spelk, Jellyfish Review, Strange Horizons, and Heavy Feather Review. Her debut novel, TreeVolution, was published in 2016, and her collection, Circe’s…
Five Poems by Alyse Knorr

Wolf Tours: Day One The wolves have eaten the children—or so say the clients, unaware of the existenceof Junior Wolf Tours and the mandatoryseparation of young and old. At the small ones’ camp they die daily in games of Graveyard,which, according to the wolves, prepares themto be unafraid of silence and stillness—betterhunters, all. And despite…
Haunted Passages: Three Poems from Letitia Trent’s cinematic poetry collection Match Cut, now available to preorder

In Letitia Trent’s latest collection, her poems weave wraith-like through the breaths between cuts, lingering in spaces often left offscreen. The work approaches deified films from the perspective of women, framing lost and forgotten voices against the overpowering mythos of the auteur. Match Cut cherishes its cinematic muses as much it critiques them. It doesn’t burn down;…
“Trial of the Hippocampus,” a poem by Sarah Cheshire

Her: uproarious laughter— a narrow staircase—Me: cheap cologne— wilted rosemary on the windowsill—Her: distant voices— strong hands— breathlessness —Me: mildew— snow— a single half-burnt candle— Them: but which came first, the beerOr the laughterAnd was it you who let his rosemaryWither—(And when you say your rosariesDo your sons prayFor him like his…
“Contact Improv,” a poem by Jack Meriwether

I just want to go where nobody’s gone before.All the people here look so tiredBut that’s what keeps them together.I used to believe in perfectible beautyNo I used to think the world couldn’t hold meNow I know it can’t.She said slide your hands over each otherThe surfaces becoming floor and bodyAnd floor and bodyInterchangeably.She said…
“Mon Cher Apollinaire”: Jordan A. Rothacker’s Death Day Letter to the Father of Surrealism

November 9, 2018 Mon Cher Apollinaire, It has been one hundred years to this day since you left us. Since I was a young Joycean—a generally weird-bookish-kid who at seventeen joined the International James Joyce Foundation, wrestling with angels and giants beyond his grasp and understanding—I have found your name intriguing, your poem “Zone” enchanting,…
Two Poems by Kyle Harvey

Glacier—for Danny Rosen and Jack Mueller We are the sea and we rise with the break offslide-in of ice,the direction easy over grease,the way melt path-slick. We have notany or much time. Or, hell,we may have forever. What will we do? Thesefinal and endless days, does it matter? Why do we expectmeaning to be profound?…
Two Poems by Jill Khoury

For Weeks I Have Been Waiting for Something Pleasant to Write About But to no avail, soI clipped some items from the daily paperWhen I come across these items I send them on It’s better than talking about the goddamn weatherI am a clipperI don’t keep at it too long It’s funny that there are…
Four Poems by Tony Mancus

All the Things Your Head Can Be your head is a pew, you drape its curve. your empty palm, pass the plate along with three dollars pulled from your pocket to stifle your candle-lit worry. the trace of a thought in one dream as it’s drawn across thresholds—your tiny form against a massive door, pressing,…