Category: Poetry

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    Jo Blair Cipriano

    a year after the rape, you attempt intimacy between your limbs and hers, a current sweat, powder, the gentle signs of erosion. you wanted this. how do you hide? your loyal fatretreats when touched: an ant follows the scent of its leader through unstirred dirt. memory transports itself the small legs of your griefwarm her…

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    courtney marie

    talking to strangers* late one night as the bar is closingsomeone i was talking to asks my name& though[we have very little in common /i never want to see them again /i hate my name]i tell them anyway then i lean close and whisperI DON’T KNOW WHO I AM it’s true (what they say) i…

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    Hannah Dow

    I TURN AWAY After Fountain of Milk Spreading Itself Uselessly on Three Shoes by Salvador Dalí Plump and improbableas honeydew melons, such breasts,in real life, would topple the spire-waistedgirl beneath. As I consider my own and refuse to make of themsome banal comparison to fruit,I acknowledge Dalí wasn’t afterreal life, and in telling myself this…

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    Bernardo Wade

    WHO DWELT AMONG US Manresa House of Retreats in Covenant, Louisiana Beneath the long armof the Mississippi,an ivory estate gleamsamongst verdant acres,receding to the swamp. Dewy jasmine ascendsits walls, not wild, butmanicured, like the rectorwho, I see, narrow inon a flower & lip himself a prayer; a rosary swaysfrom his grip. Nothingquestions the silence, until,by…

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    Karolina Zapal

    Still there are so many fish in the sea. But soon, they’ll start calling me a stara panna, start counting the fish. My grandmother’s friend, on a Sunday stroll with her husband, bends her giraffe neck to catch a glimpse of my ringless finger. Ah, but you look so young. My young look saves me.…

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    Matthew Tuckner

    TO-DO LIST The human being is a series / of tendenciesthat need to be overcome / my dead grandmother saysin a dream and I am up / out of bedovercoming them / the first tendency being the questionwho am I? / I am in love with the words who am II have failed to overcome…

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    Abbie Kiefer

    THEY’RE BUILDING A ROCKET THAT WILL FLY ITSELF to the moon. Only two seats, both spoken for —sold to an oligarch and his girlfriendor maybe a pair of website co-founders, but imagine itelseways: the first riders unremarkable. Strangers, side by side,watching a wide window and a plot of their arcinto hush and plush darkness. He…

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    Haolun Xu

    ATLAS, AT LAST Perhaps I did defeat the past. Yet it grew, nevertheless.When time continues, it will be a form of mercy.Meanwhile, they say forgiveness is the truest weapon.As proof, something in the light yesterday twisted the moon.When the morning of tomorrow breaks, perhaps so will we.I told everyone when J. died, I’ll try to liveharder,…

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    Amanda Gaines

    AFTER ANOTHER BREAKUP, I PLAY STEVIE WONDER’S “AS” & DRIVE THROUGH OKLAHOMA THINKING HOW ALL THE LAKES ARE MAN MADE Just once, I’d like to step into something that could drown mewithout worrying about dying. Okay, soI’m not really talking about lakes, here. Okay, so I knewas soon as he punched that window while I…

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    Rob Colgate

    LITANY OF UNNCESSARY LETTERS In the field with you:how the sprinklers turnedon. How you tookyour hand, how it held,then moved, then movedme; how I held stillwhile it happened.How it ended.How I don’t hold itagainst you; how I shouldthough while the fieldsits silent. How insteadI am writing this letterwith the same hand.How you used to ravehow…