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...]
Poetry Archive
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...]
3 poems by Vivian Wagner
Ada Lovelace Pays a Visit It’s all about ones and zeroes, she said, her eyes gleaming like a computer screen, her voice a comforting hum. Maybe someday you’ll understand what to do with … [Read more...]
Four poems by Mark Terrill
PARABELLUM In July enough rain to get the stream flowing in the other direction; but sufficient sunlight to raise the heads of drooping flowers seen through windows unwashed in all these … [Read more...]
Three poems by Linda E. Chown
More Than the Dying and the Wars and Our Words about Them To sit here on this roof with the Sierra Nevada mountains in my mouth and the Alhambra’s blossoming gardens up my nose and the tiled … [Read more...]
no a/c in august: poems by Constance Shultz
waiting in the car outside the senior center hot on the arm by the window a breeze comes in stirs my hair dryer air & I can hear a/c drones little dogs squeaking a handtruck in a … [Read more...]
A Variable. A Choice. by Gervanna Gravity Stephens
A Variable. A Choice. A thing shyly revealed should be holy obviously controlled by spirituality and politics not self, like--- a womb, virginity, marriage, the body. Imagine barcodes … [Read more...]
Two poems by Irène Mathieu
isthmus on our dates he’d take a pack of cookies, a roast chicken, and me down to the lakefront where stairs empty to saltwater, hand me a wing or two, and lick the rest from his knuckles, … [Read more...]
Juan Arabia: 5 poems translated by Katherine M. Hedeen
Juan Arabia (Buenos Aires, 1983) is a poet, translator, literary critic, and publisher. The poems included here belong to his collection Nature’s Dislodging [Desalojo de la naturaleza] (2017). Un … [Read more...]
Poems by Lucía Estrada, translated by Olivia Lott
The poems here come from Las Hijas del Espino [Daughters of the Hawthorn], winner of the 2006 Medellín Poetry Prize. Estrada’s poetic subject travels across centuries to highlight in each poem an … [Read more...]
birthday by William Bortz
birthday have you once felt inspiration from something ceasing / once, I saw a bird collapse out of the blueness it was once kept in / it plummeted, in silence, and I thought how / nice it would … [Read more...]
3 poems by Cooper Wilhelm
Multimedia If I were an elephant all my paintings would be of oranges, flecks left in where white paper could peak out and mirror light on skin. And people would look at the paintings and … [Read more...]
2 poems by Noah LeBien
Becoming A Man I am donning a crown of ants from the sidewalk. I am putting an ear to the floor of the garage. Cohabitation. A sky-tar. Impress the girls because (you want to be one). Show them a. … [Read more...]
