Empty Mirror

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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...]

Florilegium: Palestinian Walks

Tara K. Shepersky

Palestinian Walks Raja Shehadeh

Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh / Scribner (Simon and Schuster) / 2007 / 978-1416569664 Imagine the home you love despoiled by conquerors, who insist they are claiming only what is owed … [Read more...]

Love Song for a River Bank

Tara K. Shepersky

Home (detail). Photo by Tara Shepersky.

The great wall of ancient growth slides its shadow across the river. Alder-cedar-redwood are the color of the afternoon water: serpentine. A breeze sweeps up from the sea. It picks out the leaves of … [Read more...]

Book Review: Great Plains Bison by Dan O’Brien

Cheyenne Marco

Great Plains Bison -- Dan O'Brien

Great Plains Bison by Dan O'Brien / University of Nebraska Press / 2017 / xiii + 111pp / Despite its variety in form, length, and genre, most writing seeks to explain why. Now, more than ever, we … [Read more...]

The Poetry of Walking

Wendy Gist

Mystery Forest - Denise Enck

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the … [Read more...]

Nature As Muse: The World of Fine Writing

Doug Scott

Mt. Baker seen from Mt. Watson. Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bthompson/5011625855/ Ben Thompson

The world is never “too much with us,” said Wordsworth, but not the wild glories, which he treasured, too. Natural gifts reflecting the gifts of the gods, or of Darwin’s insights and those of the … [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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