The Swine King by Michael Jeffrey Lee
“First,” he said, shouting, even though his advisors were quite close, “know that I have exhausted every means of keeping myself alive, and when I leave you at last, it will not be by choice. But even so, all animals must die, even great ones, and my time is swiftly approaching...” Read More
Excerpts from Crane by Tessa Bolsover
I awake and the boughs, battered and paddling against the window, bruise shadows in the hardwood. Amplified by rain, the sounds inside resonate like pieces of a disassembled object. Slowly, words begin to spread with a viscous clarity over everything... Read More
Three Po-Proses by Kim Hyesoon, translated from Korean by Jack Jung
We question and answer to be nearer to “poetry.” / Literature is inherently unreal. / Poetry lies against the conventional use of language and / Fiction lies against the conventional use of reality. / Perhaps, a writer is someone who knows that after we disappear, what will remain is our lies... Read More
REM IN RE by Michael D. Snediker
Goad credo. Whether quaver or / my larynx’s season / of wilt. / Our cleverness hard & unkind sinks / into your parable, he said. / I am disposed / straightway, / a continuous body resigned / to outward travel as / an artery arrayed / in edgrow...
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Excerpt from The only name we can call it now is not its only name by Valerie Hsiung
We are swimming and smiling with fate, that is if we could, if we could move beyond the barrier which keeps us practically mute and immobile. Otherwise, it may be conceived as akin to something that resides be-tween negligence and happenstance, between dubious absence and absentmindedness, that is what is residual... Read More
Three Prose Poems by Theodore Worozbyt
As dark memories say to themselves, the only flower to grow now and then is nasturtiums, little elephant’s ears. My grandmother opened her eye and sang the bitter batter butter song. Under the case the pillow was striped in indigo. And then a kiss like a windflower came and had a final note written on... Read More
For a Stone Sky and Other Fragments by Franca Mancinelli, translated from Italian by John Taylor
this cage of mirrors / —a reflection / with someone else’s eyes. / Pixel dust, what we are. / * / where the lips were / we will not find the coin / for the other shore... Read More
Brass Bell with Tripwire by Chukwuma Ndulue
I prefer a place with no logos / Where lingering musk / wafts through closed corridors, / where there is no way to rationalize a curse, / where there is no fear worth weeping... Read More
Three Poems by Ghérasim Luca, translated from French by Austin Carder
love torrent emptiness chair / the empty chair / the torrential and empty chair suspended in meta-emptiness / the meta-chair is suspended by the torrential rope of meta-emptiness... Read More
Six Poems from Enter Ghost by Genya Turovskaya
I can’t will you out of / the latticed net of the willow’s umbrage / I will leave you there / beating the drum / of a furious grief... Read More