Tag: Poetry

Three Inaugural Poems by jacklyn janeksela

human morality is a distant planet, a fading star from a distance, a bomb-pop is meltingsomeone licks the drippings, but not meand not anyone i know, they swallow like pornstars, hum all the way down ona star-bangled banner, gag on poverty, the heel of bread toughenedlike skins of pigs and patriots and people, yespeople, rather…
Poetry: “As I Play a Drinking Game for the Final Debate, Cheering for Empathy” by Olatunde Osinaike

the rules: take a shot any time either candidate interrupts the other take a shot any time the Donald brings up the wall or yours take a shot every time Trump points to the polls to break them down again takes shot take a shot every time Hillary anxiously chuckles the debate back into one…
Two Poems by Ruth Baumann

In Absentia The hard part is the thickening of bones, the rebuildingwhat only existed ever in a system of impulse say say you want a cigaretteten years later say the elements that bind youto your old self hold the light flick it on easy everythingeverything it says used to come easy once you…
Poetry: “The River Holds the Ghost Ship Through Her Grief” by Amanda Oaks

There’s a sparseness of the tongue / a not-quite-what-I-mean / all of the time, I mean. / b/c it’s a fact / the word is not the thing— / but why? / i’d ask the sky / but it’s only / S-K-Y. … I ask you / how can the universe fit / between /…
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…