Tag: Poetry

Two Poems by Mark DeCarteret

Deluge After one day of rainwe could feel in our ankleswhere the nails had been sunkand we knew that His bloodwould somehow fail us. After two days of rainthe children sang of the pavementthey’d once chalked their own halos on—when their tongues weren’t swollenwith the names of those who’dthey stuck them out at with blame.…
Six Poems from Leafmold: F. Daniel Rzicznek

The purpose of fishing is to get healthy. Why I dream and dream of oral thrush is beside any point. A gray-templed monk knelt and swept the colored sands away with one stroke. I could see a man dancing, bleeding, chanting beneath dimmed light and I immediately had a seizure and worst of all spilt…
Three Poems by Gary Glauber

Found and Lost She was pasted firmly in the past,a trivial footnote in a weather-beaten journalgathering dust, unread on a high closet shelf,a brief coupling that held sweet silk memoriesbetween torrents of mood swings and accusations.She wore jealousy and lace, foolishly believingboth might strengthen a shaky relationship.It ended ugly, a paean to passion gone awry.Today…
Two Poems by Brian Beatty

Coyote Coyote—for Tony Fitzpatrick That forest that goesunseen for its own trees is full of mirrors, too: obscure, obsceneAmerican mirrors baring our teeth. We like whatever we notice oncewe dare to re-open our eyes. But those dark unknowns we still fearrun wild through our veins. And in the proud American waybullets whiz by our heads.…
Two Poems from This Is the Way to Rule: Joshua Young

Dear Survivors, we come upon a party of women cutting through the gut of a forest. when they see us approaching, they scatter. we keep shouting, we mean no harm, but just as quickly as we came upon them, they’ve vanished. we can hear breaths and twigs snapping, but cannot see them. our shouts keep…
Two Poems by J. Bradley

Enrolling in the Human League I’m writing you the perfect love song:the beat a gasp from Lloyd Dobblerwhile his stomach collapsesaround my right fist, the lyricscut from your favorite magazines,glued onto construction paperthat matches your eyes. I’ll shave and dress so well,my floor will wear your clothesperfectly. You’ll rememberthe tune, ignore our words. I’m a…
Poetry: Peter Schwartz’s “a dozen parables”

1.there once was a farmer who always saw the sunrise, he died in a weird experiment with mosquitoes and bees. 2.once was a pilot with nowhere to go who invented chess. 3.once was a student who coveted manhood, he developed a new way of looking at time and space but was completely penniless in the…
Poetry: Three Boundary Critiques by Andrew Rihn

I. Convergent Boundaries The Himalayan mountain range formedwhen two tectonic plates converged,their equal densities raising them uplike a sacrifice to the gods.Rick met Ilsa in Paris, a monthbefore Paris met the Germans.Convergence like this reversesour faults. We finish one another’ssentences. They drank from each other’sglasses at La Belle Aurore.She wore blue, the Germans wore grey.Convergence…
Two Poems by D.W. Lichtenberg

The Upset of My Hope Fool I wrote Chet this email and I was telling him you know best friends are like two guys on this deserted island and like there’s a bunch of little islands all over the ocean and I would ask Chet if he wanted to go to all the other islands…