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Poetry Archive

Three poems by Mickee Cheung

Mickee Cheung

east of here / credit: de

Ode to growing tomatoes These days, it seems all I do is tend to this garden and feed this dog they’ve left me and made me walk and pick shit up after and dote on. The children, they don’t … [Read more...]

Three poems by Taylor Byas

Taylor Byas

trailing / credit: de

Disciplinarian I. In the closet, racked in line for picking, belts molder and shed in leather scabs; in hand, they crack like reins. On their legs and backs, the brand of a coachman shows … [Read more...]

from Borderline Fortune: Three poems by Teresa K. Miller

Teresa K. Miller

semiahmoo / credit: em

I lift the ban—if you are gone, you will speak your own language. You broke my mother and so you broke me, lost in the thicket of your misfortune. Sharp brittle branches sticky with bird … [Read more...]

Three poems by Matt Mitchell

Matt Mitchell

way / credit: em

An Ocean of Shaking Hands Each time I bayonet a needle into my gut, I am digging up another dead boy buried in the dark corners of whatever apocalypse hides there. I carry the burden of every … [Read more...]

Four poems by Katherine Fallon

Katherine Fallon

open / credit: de

My Light Form Cacophonous ghost tribe of a love, the moment we met was a reckoning. That night, I got hungry again, and sickly so. I swelled, breathed sheer will into the drab golem of … [Read more...]

Four cow poems by Orchid Tierney

Orchid Tierney

by the river / credit: de

From blue doors The epistolemology of the field History refuses a settlement. The field is a category for knowledge. A cow is a period and more likely syntaxis. Cover of grass is blue, … [Read more...]

Two poems by Amy Gong Liu

Amy Gong Liu

Chuckanut rain / credit: de

On my Mother, or Observing Two Deer in the Road with Death Wishes I don’t share the same sentiment, but my brakes are faulty. Say, didn’t you enjoy the sun today? I’ve hurt the people most … [Read more...]

Three poems by Jose Hernandez Diaz

Jose Hernandez Diaz

possibilities / credit: de

Mrs. Weir Thank you to my high school English teacher, Mrs. Weir, For introducing me to literature. I remember reading The Catcher in the Rye during junior year of high school, And hearing … [Read more...]

Two poems by Lauren Saxon

Lauren Saxon

YOU in trees

even now, even still I remain unsettled by the lengths we go to      disguise our own loneliness my focus not on the arrows – red roses … [Read more...]

Three poems by Jennifer Vaknine

Jennifer Vaknine

cloudune / credit: de

saving schrödinger’s cat I read an article on my phone on the train about changing truth at the quantum level about making the quarks choose sides & I thought about the time in the … [Read more...]

Two poems by Risa Denenberg

Risa Denenberg

fossil view / credit: de

On Becoming a Geode I left high school pregnant, tiny pebble in the chaotic boot of the sixties. Banished for smallminded things— skipping class, protesting war, French kissing in the … [Read more...]

a tribute to creeley — Steve Dalachinsky

Steve Dalachinsky

boulevard ii / credit: de

1. moments in slow motion withdrawn like light life & their eventuality i can see clear rain thru this bitch day believe in still, a voidless piece … [Read more...]

Three poems by Georges Rose, translated by Bryan F. Flavin

Brian F. Flavin and Georges Rose

banks september / credit: em

Mer cousue ligne de fer nappe ornée d’oiseaux ciels crevés de soies où s’affalent des lumières imprévisibles par endroit le revêtement de chair avec ses maisons plus lourdes brassards … [Read more...]

Three poems by Helen McClory

Helen McClory

between / credit: de

Thirty-Five All I want now myself only is to Wear kimonos with velvet Bralets, high-waisted velvet knickers The colour, close enough, of my skin Sit by windows, smoke cigarettes On long … [Read more...]

Two poems by Alex Gallo-Brown

Alex Gallo Brown

crabpots

The Normal Ways In the morning her mom is gone and it is just me watching her tip an empty espresso cup to her lips or fuss with a bottle of the spiciest hot sauce on Beacon Hill. There … [Read more...]

Three poems by Denzel Scott

Denzel Scott

overlay / credit: de

A Train and a Funeral I had to hop a train to bury my most recent dead. His body laid in the funeral home at the other side of the tracks. I parked my car in the liquor … [Read more...]

Two poems by Adenle Iyanuoluwa Deborah

Adenle Iyanuoluwa Deborah

portal / credit: de

It’s never enough but it’s plenty: it bore other names, one title different from the next, i can't hold on to the shadows. so, i spelt it as mother. As yeshua. … [Read more...]

Four poems by Robert Hogg

Robert Hogg

perspective / credit: de

Manhattan Daimon (for Nadia and her daughter As moon is to earth and earth about sun turns so I dance at the tree root till woodpecker sing and footfall free Ge from slumber … [Read more...]

Two poems by Amy Watkins

Amy Watkins

the way back / credit: de

  We Help a Friend Move in with Her New Lover She says that she feels safe with him. She says she falls asleep when he drives, like a child who will be carried in to bed. She says this … [Read more...]

Crown of Sonnets—Me in the Multiverse by Prince Bush

Prince Bush

the moment / credit: de

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...]

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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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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.

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