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...]
“Write What My Spirit Demands”: An Interview with Devorah Major on Writing in Multiple Genres
Writing in more than one genre can free a writer’s creativity and open up ways of interacting with the world, but writing in multiple genres means making the mental switch from one form to another. … [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...]
Two poems by J.David
the cemetery that was ash It was the last day of summer / when the church cemetery became ashes / as it burned / schools of … [Read more...]
Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg: A Story of Influences
The well-known link between Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman comes from both Ginsberg's readers and Ginsberg himself. One of the first explicit mentions of Walt Whitman in Ginsberg's published poetry … [Read more...]
Three poems by Constance Schultz
when we move in February and it feels like spring and as a deer gang harass a neighbor’s garden at midnight she sneers can you talk about a dam every day can you feel it you feel the … [Read more...]
Teresa K. Miller: poems from California Building
Notes: Nods to Elaine Bleakney’s For Another Writing Back, Irene Drennan’s “Totems Wait,” Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge’s “Alakanak Break-Up,” and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. … [Read more...]
Two poems by Amee Nassrene Broumand
The War A lotus can’t become words—life bleeds out. Still I struggle to engrave the water’s face, the lotic Mess: Daylight speckles the orchard. I long to pin this dragonfly down & … [Read more...]
for what the same ignites: poems by Linda E. Chown
For Alison Krause In her honor, she was killed at Kent State May 4, 1970 The girl who placed the stem in a gun Said I’m hit And all the world burst Into blood As the bullet burrowed And … [Read more...]
Oral History of a Touch-Starved Maniac: 2 poems by Sage
Oral History of a Touch-Starved Maniac Can it be in Byzantium 547CE a king steps from his bath at the same moment I glance inside a Starbucks window and see my own reflection staring … [Read more...]
2 poems by Bola Opaleke
WORDS THAT MAKE US INTO BEASTS how now can the gods not protect us from the rotten words into which our bodies melt – the swollen forest of grief where only black sunshine rises. the … [Read more...]