Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Poetry
  • Reviews
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

eyes on / horizon by Emilie Kneifel

Emilie Kneifel

eyes on 8 by Emilie Kneifel

torn from a frantic nap into my perch in the corner. drowsy stare makes a masterpiece. the shadow paint. candied branch drip. white shoes on wet grass that glow like a fizz. //// /// /// / /// / … [Read more...]

Birds, Caves, Time by Nels Hanson

Nels Hanson

credit: Viktor Dukov / Unsplash

Murmuration To shake one’s head, to murmur “I don’t know,” implies a certain faith, thisevening’s swerving, changing cloud of birds above the failing farm reminds me. We didn’t invent our bones … [Read more...]

My Coleridge: On Five Poems by Sara Coleridge

Stephanie Limb

Sara Coleridge

‘Passion is blind not love: her wondrous might’ Passion is blind not Love: her wondrous might Informs with three-fold pow’r man’s inward sight: – To her deep glance the soul at large … [Read more...]

No Place Like Home

Angela Mayorga

Photo by Alina Daniker on Unsplash

“Why don’t you bring your friends over? You’re always locked up in that room,” her hands gesture while her foot is on the pedal. She insists on concentrating her gaze onto me as she “talks,” but … [Read more...]

Intimacy with Doors

Bára Hladík

photo by Daniel Tseng / unsplash

Doors are a foundation of our psyche. To understand this, we must ask ourselves: how do we move through doors, how do we conduct ourselves near doors, as we flit through our busy lives, bags in hand, … [Read more...]

Seizure

Stephanie Andersen

Seizure - essay by Stephanie Andersen

It is late in April, one of those cool and wet mornings when the sun’s light is hazy and blue. I wake early, escape out the front door of my suburban townhome with a cup of coffee, tell my husband … [Read more...]

Are Hungry Ghosts Just Ghosts with Borderline Personality Disorder?

Courtney Cook

20 east / credit: de

“You need to stop waiting for everything to click,” the psychic said, pulling her clasped fingers apart and then placing them together again, in a sort of locking motion. “There is no magic moment. Is … [Read more...]

They Saved Me from Myself by D. Nolan Jefferson

D. Nolan Jefferson

d nolan jefferson

The first gay bar I ever went to was a lesbian bar called The Flame. It was on the edge of the gay neighborhood called Hillcrest in San Diego on Park Avenue. I worked in nearby Balboa Park, taking … [Read more...]

Desert Alignment

Laura Johnson

photo by Laura Johnson

Nothing is born, nothing dies. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to release. Samsara is nirvana. There is nothing to attain. When we realize that afflictions are no other than enlightenment, We can … [Read more...]

Endless Preface to an Imaginary Work

Evelynn Black

elementary / credit: em

Light is Speech Marianne Moore, What are Years 1. walking on water in the morning light, walking on water near the boat of saints, the water clear as the conflagration of the dead upon … [Read more...]

An excerpt from Rachmil Bryks’ memoir, The Fugitives, translated from the Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Rachmil Bryks and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

An excerpt from Rachmil Bryks' memoir, The Fugitives translated from Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Translated from the Yiddish by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub. Published with the permission of the author’s daughter, Bella Bryks-Klein Translator’s Note: “This is How It All Began” and “Fugitives” are the … [Read more...]

Milkman by Anna Burns: a soundtrack to street harassment

Laura Eppinger

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash / edited by Empty Mirror

Milkman Since my car fell apart in November 2018 I’ve been commuting 12 miles to work without one, via crumbling New Jersey, USA public transportation infrastructure. The roughest parts of my commute … [Read more...]

Exposed by Patty Somlo

Patty Somlo

trail of the cedars / d.enck

The day after a man exposed himself to me on the secluded tree-lined trail, I reluctantly switched my walk to the more open, well-travelled path. I’d known, as every woman does, that walking alone … [Read more...]

God and the Magical Potato Chips by Jennifer Jordán Schaller

Jennifer Jordán Schaller

God and the Magical Potato Chips by Jennifer Jordan Schaller

When I was a six-year-old child, it was the eighties. I sometimes stayed overnight with my Grandma Virginia in the South Bronx. My Grandma Virginia only spoke English when she talked to people like … [Read more...]

Are Made Of

Tomoé Hill

Are Made Of - essay by Tomoé Hill

You remember each new encounter, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the salivating. How your mouth shaped around every new one in an attempt to make itself one with it, tongue exploring crevices and … [Read more...]

Body Bereft of Fitton Farm

Justine Fitton

Body Bereft of Fitton Farm - Justine Fitton

1. Under a gray sky, the sun came around a corner like a drunk with a knife, a slice of light on the ruins of our childhood: the houses, sheds, barns, and junkyards that were once our farm on County … [Read more...]

Lexington Avenue

Buku Sarkar

Lexington Avenue by Jeffrey Zeldman

The span of Lexington Avenue between 25th and 29th streets is flanked on either side by Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian restaurants; by buffets of masala chicken and palak, floating in layers of … [Read more...]

The Accidental Monster: Salomé, Mom and Me

Melissa Knox

The Accidental Monster: Salomé, Mom and Me

It is strange that the husband of my mother looks at me like that. I know not what it means. In truth, yes, I know it. —Oscar Wilde, Salomé   When Oscar Wilde wrote Salomé in 1891, English … [Read more...]

Icarus Regrets Every Tired Muscle

Wm. Anthony Connolly

Icarus / credit: de

At the base of my spine glows an orange orb, free-floating amidst the Harrington rods and titanium cage. My low spine fused, my narrative nerves pinched and running the length of this mortal cord from … [Read more...]

Scylla

Buku Sarkar

Scylla - Buku Sarkar essay

Central Park in spring was magical. Leaves began to reappear on bare trees; the sun rose earlier—soft and shy—just waking up after winter, turning everything into a warm amber. It all looked new; even … [Read more...]

« Previous Page
Next Page »

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!


Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2023 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures