Crown of Sonnets—Me in the Multiverse My head’s four o’clock flowers sprout on cracks In the sidewalk during predawn, concrete and grass Prepares—too early, all asleep—bloom out my head. Last … [Read more...]
Poetry Archive
Two poems by Todd Dillard
A Door like a Wound The door first appeared in my backyard, white sentinel among anemone sheets unfurling on clotheslines. The next morning I found it laying on the back row of the bus, … [Read more...]
Five poems and four collages by Steve Dalachinsky
the blood hustle (more than a lb. of flesh) - “everything is somewhere else.” - for gregory corso @ perazzo funeral … [Read more...]
Two poems by Cali Kopczick
Switchback Softpalm welcome to the door jamb and the waiting stoop and the quarry mined to dust to mold it. Little mountain, meet your shadow. I Learn from My Subscriptions Squash takes … [Read more...]
Two poems by Constance Schultz
on the beach at steamboat rock thinking too deep of the stars & lake & columbia flowing below all her strength extra hot today we forget again the coldest part of winter forget when … [Read more...]
Sky Pieces: three poems by Michael Lehman
The Sky Above Fickle Hill in January Rain reaching over the ridge from a dark ocean Salmonbellied sea crud hides the slenderest moon The Sky Above Fickle Hill in June Edge of … [Read more...]
Four poems translated from the Sanskrit by Brishti Guha
Translator's note:These poems from the Sanskrit “Gathasaptashati” are attributed to King Hala, a first-century AD ruler of the Satavahana dynasty in ancient South India. Hala’s version was in Prakrit, … [Read more...]
Three poems by Danielle Rose
aleister crowley summoned demons & all i get is this tarot telling me about how i am always in the wrong i want to become a fountain / first still stone / then bubbling water like seeping / like … [Read more...]
Three poems by Andrew Shattuck McBride
To the Person(s) Who Drowned Beehives and Set Others on Fire, Killing 600,000 Bees When I was a kid, wild bees swarmed a plum tree on Dad’s property. From our picture window, I marveled at the … [Read more...]
Poems by Iranian poet Bijan Najdi, translated by Parisa Saranj
I have chosen the poetry of Bijan Najdi’s for its heartbroken yet hopeful and tender view of the world. Najdi’s poems provide a window into concerns of modern Persian poetry and Iranian society. I … [Read more...]
Broken Glosa: an alphabet book of post avant glosa by Stephen Bett
Note: Stephen Bett’s father took him to sit, age 15 and starting out in poetry, at the feet of his father’s friend P.K. Page, the doyenne of Canadian poetry, who later revived the "glosa" in Canada. … [Read more...]
Four poems for Empty Mirror by rob mclennan
1. However quick, language still takes time to adapt. Beautiful things, to wit: the colour of a spring balm, a tongue. The amplification of syntax. What have you. 2. His hospital … [Read more...]
Three poems by Ann Eleven
If Wishes I’ve never walked in so much woods I didn’t come to somewhere roads ran towards. If I missed a train another train would follow, my ticket prove good for that journey or some … [Read more...]
Six poems by Háel Lopez, translated by Ariel Francisco
Complete Turn Your heart fell into a glass of beer I watched it drown while tracing the rim with my finger. The pieces fall on terrible rhymes of an endless poem but you don’t get up, don’t … [Read more...]
Three poems by Dani Putney
Potato Bugs For Breanna On an electric box outside your house, I told you potato bugs were tragically beautiful. You mentioned wasps: how an arrow sits on their striped abdomens, nature’s … [Read more...]
Two poems by Katherine Fallon
Meet Cute Summer an anti-shadow, diamond-bladed, and you, the soft-bodied starfish, the bell, a slim book to be opened. Patience, profusion. Nothing less than a pageant: caught breath and the … [Read more...]
Günter Grass: three translations and response poems by Allie Marini
These poems are dedicated to the memory of Dr. Glenn R. Cuomo, Professor of German Studies 1992-2017, New College of Florida, with whom the translator first began work on this project in 1997. Fishily … [Read more...]
Two poems by Joanna Cleary
I Cook Us Beets I cook us beets, using the red to smear your teeth with love. This poem will not be long. I make us beets, pulling them apart like convex and ashamed little hearts. You are … [Read more...]
Two poems by Cynthia X. Hua
Brown Eyes So the universe is everything, even the anthills even the anthills lit with whispering, longing, elegant brownstones and engine fires and dirty arguments the body you didn’t … [Read more...]
5 poems by Miss Poetrix, translated from the Italian by Alessandra Bava
Translator's note: Miss Poetrix (pen name for Gaia Casanova) is a poet and performer from Rome, Italy. Her work is reminiscent of Italian poets such as Patrizia Valduga and American poets such as Anne … [Read more...]
Three poems by Edgar Rincón Luna, translated by Toshiya Kamei
Farewell to the Beach Why does this shadow that's no longer us hurt so much? why does that ash getting losing among stones make us cry? The heart of the world spills and caresses nobody's … [Read more...]
Three poems by Savannah Slone
collectibles / commotion open my old trunk, find my trinket ruins fish for vintage brushstrokes find that confession is a church is a cosmic captive here are my handfuls of stars this is an … [Read more...]
Three poems by Linda E. Chown
Education Don’t ask me to know your trees or the green statues of famous men. Don’t ask me to assume polite silence before gray old churches or to join in your search for the meaning of proud … [Read more...]
Three poems by J. David
On defiance, as a verb All matter emits black body radiation on becoming thermal cavity at equilibrium with the void. There is ritual in the cleansing molten of burnish and shine, each turn of … [Read more...]
from Evolutions: poems by Cheryl Pallant
Cultivating the Space Between It’s the light in the sky that conjures the eye that transmits the heart that foots the thrill where humanity thrives. It’s the glow in the go that propels the … [Read more...]
Two poems by john sweet
excavation 1 came out of the dentist’s office and i’d lost the poem, half my mouth numb, the other half filled with the taste of stale metal had the bill in my hand less than a quarter … [Read more...]
Two poems by Alina Stefanescu
What I Sought in Bucharest, Summer of 1990 I came to talk Plotinus, Ceausescu, revolution, was given Cioran and everything, everything happened in the cradle of that language where I first … [Read more...]
Six poems by Zheng Xiaoqiong/郑小琼, translated from Chinese by Zhou Xiaojing
周阳春 / Zhou Yangchun In the world of her dreams she stands at the ferry without boats or before she can finish the exam time is … [Read more...]
Three poems by Ken Pobo
Before I Came Out Pastor Clack fitted me for a roomy chastity belt, so big that it held our church, my school and neighborhood. This belt hurt when I tried to move. One day, near the … [Read more...]
Three poems by Clair Dunlap
Homebody sometimes i am two people: me, and me but sadder. the space this second me inhabits is the space between the mind's eye and the smaller me of 1998 picking her way over a rocky … [Read more...]
Two poems by Nate Maxson
Archaeology Each object that survives us That survives our consumptive affections Our blue-flame greed Balances in perfect Newtonian opposition There’s no removing the counterweights Even if … [Read more...]
Three poems by marcia arrieta
the words the words appear like sunlight visible lines of wind & dust luminous incantations of the Sacred Valley, of the Sedona desert I draw the tree … [Read more...]
Four poems by María DeGuzmán
If a Tree Falls in the Woods … Narrow an eye to a blade of scrutiny. See in a flash how a thing can cut. Imagine the heartwood without splitting the tree; the fallout splicing the atoms in … [Read more...]
Two poems by Casimir Wojciech
THE BLUE OF THE FLAME "There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play and is touched upon in these phenomena. There is no better, there is no … [Read more...]
Three poems by Heather Derr-Smith
Epigraph I dreamt Mary Shelley gave me her lover’s heart wrapped in paper blood dried into shapes like shadow puppets behind the … [Read more...]
Two poems by Faizan Syed
Always My depression was never a pill, except when I swallowed it whole and allowed the smoke to meander up out of the orifice I once measured by its silences. My pills were never moonlight, … [Read more...]
Five poems by David Kherdian
In Calling Out Somewhere inside me my father is circling the fork of his spade digging the earth. I hold his workman's hankie and wipe his brow without his seeing. Behind, the lands he has … [Read more...]
2 poems by Emily Tuttle
My Mother Asks Me to Put Myself in My Father’s Shoes I wrapped him in the ocean so the waves could help him sleep, roll over him like seashells, resting while the world crashed. We built … [Read more...]
Two poems by Jim Richards
50 It’s a crowbar someone left on the side of the freeway after changing a flat tire at two a.m. No one knows how that bar worked its way to the middle of the lane where you are … [Read more...]
Two poems by Nicole Burney
Chamomile A boy I know died/ and I don’t know what to make of it/ he is my first/ frailty/ Storm clouds gather/ this is good/ I need balance inside and out/ I burn an omelette/ I remember his … [Read more...]