Tag: Poetry

Two Poems by Natalie Shapero

Half-staff Long enough I have lived in this city—when the flagsits at half-staff, strangers ask me why, and askin vain. I only know the major deaths. I’m best with warsof expansion. On losses beyond that, I have littleto add, except to make clear I trust and do not envythe low clerk charged with every up…
Three Poems from Nymphlight: Erin Lyndal Martin

I Want to be Drunk with You So I Can See You Laugh:Les Amants du Pont-Neuf You, my lover, the fire-eater, lay with me atopthe oldest bridge that crosses the Seine, the wine making us hoot and yell.Booms of light flared and blasted, so we stood atop the bridge lookingat Paris—our Paris—and waiting for debris.…
Poetry: Joshua Ware’s “The Divine Mystery of Clothes”

cut from fabric in a secondhand store, unravels our emptinessinto closets of cotton, linen, nylon, and silkIn the dream of fashion etiquette not yet discoveredwe speak in hushed tones of a blue taffeta gown you will wearfor the second-coming: a rapture rendingthe naked from the nude, a divide never healedfrom now until nightdress. I cannot…
Poetry: “Laurentian” by Ashely Adams

I want to be cinders and paddle-wake,birth-warm to the touch. But I am not a metal vein,and this sea who plays at youth—trapped in August or October.It doesn’t matter when: the storm always white-cap scales and copper-greenbleeding fangshook and drag mepast sturgeon’s diamonds. Down, down to the kingdom of 32 degrees.Thrones of ore-sunk ship,a crown…
Poetry: Chas Hoppe & Joshua Young’s “[placeholder]”

[1] [2] [3] he was a film extra for about a month,driving his Jeep around down by the viaductuntil about six in the morning each day. you ever tried to freeze-frame a vhs? she hid his parents in the gift-shop bathroomand rented a karaoke machine for his birthday.[4] do the memories expire with…
Poem & Song: “Darkness Fell” by Nancy Christensen King & Alani Keiser

Darkness Fell (Poem by Nancy Christensen King) “Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night,But as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room,”Wrote Pliny the YoungerAcross the Bay of Naples, a witness to the doom. At the foot of Mount Vesuvius, Italian souls laid toilBuilding on the mountainside to…
Three Poems by Sergio A. Ortiz

A Wolf “I know there’s something better down the road.We need to find a place where we are safe.”—from “Praise Song for the Day,” by Elizabeth Alexander passed by my eyesleaving his footstepsin my veins.Stealthy and hungry,he stalked the cityscrutinizing the future.Today the shutters are closedbecause in this poemthere’s a wolfcoming to get me.Even when I…
Poetry: “The Force” by Danielle DeTiberus

Generations of boys whacking offin bedrooms and basements, imaginingthemselves one of three men inside a juiced-up worm frothing at the gold bikiniprincess. Metal cold on so much bareflesh that even the married, middle-aged cad can’t help himself to a taste betweentakes. But what of Carrie, nineteen and nowomen around to shrug at, to roll her…
Two Poems by Kate Bucca

Cleave The man I chose for an affairrose onlyto my forehead. His cock barely registered in my mouth. So when my husbandthrew me down and forced his way inside I answered him honestly— yes, you are bigger— before he struck my face. ~ Flashbacks ease with treatmentor so they say. Instead I recreate,drink…