Tag: Poetry

“Daughter’s Lament,” a poem by Candice Kelsey

“The ways in which I am my mother’s daughter are infinite.” ~ Roxane Gay I’m just a blueprint spread across the drafting table like warm butter only I do not melt under your heavy stone palms pressing my corners. Your red pencil a sun dial ready to cast shadows on my body this body…
“Equivalence Point,” a poem by Jeff Pearson

My father really died because he wanted to save gas mileage.A bishop asked me to touch his body to feel there was no spirit in there, formaldehydealready nourishing the cells like xylem and phloem trying to escape to the ground.There is nothing like ice, high melting point. Unlike mercury. Like the poisonous vial of slithering…
Poetry: Rebecca Street’s “Sixth Sense”

1. GustationIf I was the one screaming, you were the one covering my mouth. Call this an oversight, if you will. I was too loose. I was shaken, not stirred. I was free and handed to you by a stranger. Remember when you replaced the racket in my hand with a baseball bat? Skull cracks.…
Four Poems by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

[After the operation, my sister needs help] After the operation, my sister needs help getting out of bed. My mother’s bare feet gum the slick floor, bracing. My sister leans into her arms. The dogs’ eyes are wide. The two eyes of my mother’s blonde dog, the one eye of my sister’s whose bad eye…
Five Poems by Michael Augustine Jefferson

Ode to Robert Jordan, for Whom the Bell Tolls And I went into the wooded area below East and by the creek and there I cried about an hour smoking Newports against a tree with my knees there at the chin and my feet angled awkwardly ugly as it all feels when drained down the…
Three Poems by R.D. Landau

Ghazal Chocolate meditation: listen to the foil crinkle touch the smooth surface, bite off the tip, now eat the kiss. All she wants is to climb a tree in peace. But all these strangers (relatives) demand a kiss. She woke with the pain of childbirth (twins). What prince would slash through briar for a kiss?…
Three Poems by Jill M. Talbot

Saturday Night Palsy (i) I am not sure about this case. But that is not what I meant to say.What I meant was that my fingers disagree—my right hand—left brain has control since I have Saturday Night Palsy where your hand just gives up on life—an existential crisis—and no matter what it won’t face life.…
Poetry: Excerpts from Margo Berdeshevsky’s Before the Drought

Before the Drought is a lyric meditation on corporeal existence, suffused with atavistic spirit and set in historical as well as cosmic time, a work of radical suffering and human indifference but also sensual transport. The tutelary spirits of these poems are the feminine principle, and a flock of messengers that include blue heron, ibis, phoenix,…
Five Poems from The Tongue of Narcissus by Jennifer Bullis

Echo’s Letter to Cassandra I can’t say I blame Hera for punishing me with this voicelessness,this accursed repetition. She has run out of ways to punish Zeus except by afflicting those in whom he takes his delights.Take them he does: he does charm, but never asks consent. Leda, Leto, Metis—not one of them told him…