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Poetry Archive

What to Wake Up For, by Todd Clouser

Todd Clouser

digital collage - D Enck

It lifts me from sleep, from hot wind dream A mute sun in the never winter morning A thought - someone anywhere, you, may read this … [Read more...]

Farmers, Queens, Trains and Clowns

g emil reutter

With each step floor boards sing out of tune, mice dance in walls, spiders spin webs as the sun sifts through broken blinds, glassless remnants of windows. Spindle less banister leads lurching … [Read more...]

What the Lower Mind Discerns

Sam Silva

Computer music from within ...matched in its expressive rhythm by the rattling tin! One of the coolest days in July helps the feelings on toward Autumn's endless sky and leaf and breeze come … [Read more...]

Pagan Days

Sam Silva

poem by Sam Silva

Prayers are face down and descend in stoic gloom ...what goes up is methane and all of the other various fume and gas which punctuate a tired pain made of a planets sheer exhaust while … [Read more...]

Imagist Socialist Poetry and Objective Reality

Serkan Engin

yg

[Editor's note: Serkan Engin is a socialist Laz poet-author from Turkey. He aims to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to that end has published numerous articles about literary theory, … [Read more...]

elegy by bruno neiva

bruno neiva

Alain Delon as Jef Costello

elegy (in memory of victor esteban celeiro) noir coffee spilled over the newspaper we talked for hours, jobless hours about borders, coups and the icelandic landscape jef costello was … [Read more...]

Two poems: “Ed Dorn Beside the Cloud of Unknowing” and “Fantasia”

Jim Nawrocki

Ed Dorn Beside the Cloud of Unknowing His Collected Poems on my nightstand, so thick that there’s room on the spine for his portrait, his face, sardonic behind cheap sunglasses, his life’s work … [Read more...]

Histories of a Small Southern Town / What Happens With Our Greed

Sam Silva

Poems by Sam Silva

HISTORIES OF A SMALL SOUTHERN TOWN Like those young and ardent tragedies which surround ...summer will come and burn with its fury about this small city built on a swamp. It will come and the … [Read more...]

At the Carnival of Drunken Poets

Alfred K. LaMotte

pieces of the story / credit: de

I ran into Kerouac at the carnival where those just dead meet those about to be reborn. He and I have wandered through the zodiac again and again, like prodigal suns. Both of us enter this … [Read more...]

The Muse is on the loose

Yannis Livadas

elevation - photo by empty mirror

The Muse is on the loose and wastes herself away on some cretin. A severe goer through everyday scandals. It is well worth risking a damnation or two. Almost anything stumbles upon its … [Read more...]

Summer’s Onslaught Edging Into May

Sam Silva

Summer's onslaught edging into May bakes this swampy yard. Iced coffee levels out the day outside and the guest room has a bed and fan cool as petals on the water ...the mind is groggy … [Read more...]

On Leaving Peru: 5 poems by Todd Clouser

Todd Clouser

image credit: http://www.freeimages.com/profile/aranuir

Even the Crows are Colored Here Even the crows are colored here Water in the Sky foots prints to forever rivers While the woman of Betania makes lunch for the hurried thinkers, I am Even the … [Read more...]

The Insides of Argentina

Todd Clouser

Argentina / via http://www.freeimages.com/profile/mexikids

The Humor is Heroic We have just played a concert in a small town in the flat part of Argentina Desert most of the time, moon up by string, half at full scream, other in dust left by a murder … [Read more...]

5 Poems by Sam Silva

Sam Silva

Five

A STORY OF GLACIAL WATERS You are a little older than me in years if not in heart. And if you, in the final cup you drink cause the trees and the clouds and the sun to sink I will know again … [Read more...]

Keeping the Darkness Out

Kirby Wright

How fast the sun arrives And disappears, its arc Belongs to yesterday As whiskey and cigarettes Future forward. The night turns to lust To keep the darkness out. We are addicted … [Read more...]

Abused Letters of Hope

Serkan Engin

rain girl

Dedicated to you... I was born to loop my balmy dreams to your bleeding verses born to shout your childhood fads lost in a mute hell in front of everybody I am the delicous revenge of all … [Read more...]

The End of the World Through a Fish Bowl

Sam Silva

arbor trail / credit: em

In summer time I am an air conditioned icicle ...in winter, the steam which haunts the house. I will not go into the grocery store with you Rachel ...I will ride along in the car and be a … [Read more...]

3 poems by Dennis Mahagin

Dennis Mahagin

semiahmoo electric

Doc Williams’ 12-Step Blues so much, depending on a frayed flannel shirt with sleeves whacked off, burn marks, buttoned lopsided, sending prayers and good thoughts over the AA … [Read more...]

6 short poems by Sparrow

Sparrow

Sunrise, courtesy http://www.sxc.hu/profile/jcash

Shrug I shrug when I'd rather scream. Overheard on the Subway "Bedbugs make me horny." Car A lone car on Route 28 at 5:22 AM – leaving the night shift? Rushing to … [Read more...]

Present Consumption – a poem by Eileen Tull

Eileen Tull

The time of now is the present of madness Quoted everyone who ever lived in a time. The walls of today are streaked, obfuscated windows and dog doors nailed shut. The foundation of now’s house is … [Read more...]

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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.

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