Confession by Martine Bellen
Who seeks an old poem? / A poem / long in the tooth / losing / its words? / Who seeks a poem / that forgets? / The poem / placed a post / in the help / wanted section / of the virtual paper... Read More
Five Poems from The Star-Spangled Brand by Marcelo Morales, trans. from Spanish by Kristin Dykstra
Freedom and solitude go together. / The hand is better at killing than the mind. / The way power steers truth and steers lies. / The way they steer your life. / From a place in the present, you choose the past. / You accept the tyranny of circumstance... Read More
Three Poems by Franz Werfel, trans. from German by James Reidel
The poison only masters life’s emptiness, / Food from sunlight requires its opposite. / God himself places this evil in our way / As a baser need of the soul’s well-being...
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Three Prose Poems by Sheila E. Murphy
Now I lay me dormant as a spot. The clock taps shoulder length and hairlines fracture plot. I think the story was a maze, and you, my inkblot, told the tale of me toute seule where I would whisper your soft name, the frame of it, the hemline brushing tile... Read More
Mom Is Dying by Michael Ruby
We have something we don’t want to know / A landing in our instability / A threshold in the taut pendulum / Without belaboring the ice / And transcendental opportunity / For a heavy eraser applied to a pointed object / The point lives between the ice and the solvent... Read More
Three Poems by Zoe Tuck
How do I write our way in without building a wall, a gate? Here I am looking for an answer from your words, forced instead by circumstances back into my inner resources... Read More
Moon Valley by Gaby Williams
The world was right where I wanted / But I chose not to live there / I am going beyond beauty / Here’s the address: / The sun is setting / It’s seven o’clock / and summer is coming soon... Read More
Three Poems by Elizabeth Robinson
The hereafter is not without / pain because / its mute claim is upon us. / Smell of pelt, yearning in / a creature, / no heart but a pulpy bell / that refuses to move as we / diverge from its / yearning unrung... Read More
Six Poems by Christine Shan Shan Hou
A tongue is not a limb / but an escape route / Into the arena of tiny decisions / Where an opportunity / Presents itself in the form of a five-pointed star / Lone pawn overlooking pond of crooked pawns / Everything that happens within a lifetime becomes / Less new by the hour... Read More
My Glamorous Box by Vi Khi Nao
In Vegas, I live in a box. In a beautiful box for 4.5 months. And, it looks like this: / Where the light is miraculous. / There are radiations in my winter. My summer is skydiving. / I have been waking up in a cloud of fog. This weightlessness that is filled with liquid deterrent... Read More