Tag: Poetry

Poetry: Matthew Harrison’s “Learning Circles”

I learned to dance by dropping soap in the showerand catching it. You should see me cut a lineon the raised floor that flashes beside the roller rink.A head spin: that’s something I don’t do, but I do noodle.Windmill. Worm. The Manic Alligator. I learned to roller skateby sliding in acrylic socks across the polished…
Two Poems by Carolyn Zaikowski

Summons Where do they go after the stormWhere do they go after the tideWhere do they go after they’re lostWhere do they go after the sprawl Where do they go when there’s no bridgeWhere do they go when there’s no brideWhere do they go when there’s no stationWhere do they go when there’s a mountain…
Poetry: Amy Forstadt’s “What My Son Learns”

My son learns to readin school. His teachers are calm and cold.They teach him words like contrarianbut not denier. Alleged not false.Alt-right not wrong. My son learns math. His teachers smilewhen they’re furious.They show him two plus twoequals five. And how divisionmatters most of all. My son learns art. His teachers give him all white…
Three Poems by Julie Rouse

The Direst I’ve been the same bad dream since I was eight.Still the body its interlocutors.Pierce my ear and listen to the crunch.Stick a needle underneath my thumb.Listen to mom and dad in the next room.Listen to the Bangles Egyptian.Piss in the corner, old enough to know.Dippy puppies hump each other for fun.Out in the…
Three Poems by Joseph Mulholland

Transmigration, Volume One Did you recognize the sensation of olive meat hugging its cold pit for warmth? Her blood-belly protrudes over the ruined slipstream—secrets of torn flesh pinpush in the gunshot light. The walls of this open hymnal shine jukebox-pink—she adjusts fingers under the elastic band, glassglued to inconstancy, afflicted. Your morning electric chair shrinking…
Two Poems by M.A. Schaffner

So Morbid, So What? -1- Okay it’s not death but the long preludeof appointments, tests, and troubling results,followed by additional procedures.It’s called a crab because it moves sidewaysand picks almost delicately with its clawswhere instruments can see, if not respond,until the final stage of tearing outwhat weakness it finds, which is everywhere. Here’s more knowledge…
Two Poems by torrin a. greathouse

& so i am writing another poem about gravestones which is to say, i am writing about destinations & not that we don’t all end up there, eventually, but i have watched far too many of us arrive to heaven, anxious & far too early as if it were a party, & we invited only…
Poetry: “Ass” by Diane DeCillis

Tremulous gibbous moons,sand dunes of the body’s terrain,I’m talking double bubble entendre—not smart ass, the know-it-all,the wiseacre—more cheek to cheek,a tango as it were, the stuff of rumba,samba, mambo—parallelyet unparalleled in synonymy. Call it: buttocks, butt, booty, behind, backside,bum, buns, bedonkadonk, arse, can, cheeks,hind-end, haunches, heinie, keister, glutes,rump, gluteus maximus (or minimus) tail feather,rear, junk-in-the-trunk,…
Poetry: “Ni Hao to You Too” by Dorothy Chan

A white man says “Ni hao” to meas I wait for my Las Vegas flight.I can’t look at him though he’s now sitting next to me with his ni hao nervesince he thinks he’s so progressivespeaking Mandarin in his hunting outfit but doesn’t he know that anyonewho’s seen a Rosetta Stone commercialor been to EPCOT…