men in the moon – Charlotte Covey
Monday, July 25, 2016 20:37 — 0 Comments
aries. when you lived in the basement, i dreamt of going down there, finding you, kissing you, replacing an unnamed ache with thirteen-year-old love. i wonder if you would have let me stay. taurus. it was when you whispered, princess. when you held my hand in the dark, rubbed my back amid frenzy. when i took you on my knees, confessed every dirty thought i ever had. we forget what it was like not to know. gemini. i named you gemini. you cusp, you bridge. you moment of insanity. i never saw myself in you. never attached your […]
At the End of Time (Wish You Were Here) – Jeannine Hall Gailey
Tuesday, June 21, 2016 10:33 — 1 Comment
I tried to call you one night but you were in Thailand. I was listening to Tool’s “Opiate†and reading about the particulate levels in China and the meteor that had narrowly missed us yesterday and realized I’d missed the recent eclipse and also missed you. I realized 40 years of learning were leaking through the lesions in my brain, names and faces and memories of us and I wanted to reassure you that I would still remember you but then maybe I won’t – like the radioactive water leaking from Fukushima burning the algae and sea lions – nature […]
Three Poems – Krys Malcolm Belc
Monday, May 23, 2016 13:06 — 1 Comment
seven and a half years in philly. for seven years now philadelphia drivers have been trying to kill me. at first i thought it was cause i was a queer. i would walk hand in hand with anna and they’d be born suddenly, bruised pontiacs, new cadillacs, jeeps, minivans, breathless metal missionaries. on 45th street i’d look helplessly into the coffee shop across from my apartment for a witness. everyone looked down. then i had a round-faced, solemn baby. drivers still had my number. he had my wife’s eyes and they still tried to mash him like potatoes. we left […]
The Carpenter-Poet – Nate Brantingham
Monday, May 2, 2016 10:40 — 3 Comments
His hands are huge— tools and boards, sheetrock and girders have roughed his hands with thick calluses. He has built houses and refurbished stores. Half of Pike Place Market has seen his hands on the walls. Before it opens, he knocks on a roll-up door, muffling the smells of a bakery. The door opens barely a foot and a cinnamon roll appears. This man will return the next day as he has always done. Again he is told to come back tomorrow and the cycle continues. But those too-thick hands, I know they hold books during lunch break, some written […]
Three Poems – Taylor Hamann
Monday, April 25, 2016 12:43 — 1 Comment
Sunrise I grew a mountain lily in the palm of my hand while you were sleeping, your toothbrush still tightly wrapped in that duffel bag, your boots by the door. But I held life as it bloomed under the shade of my body, my naked spine turned towards the sun. Mannequin You bought your left hand five blocks east of the train station, stitching it to your wrist, needle poking through soft flesh and braiding your veins like licorice. I think your right foot is from that greasy pawn shop downtown. You can trust me, you said, then […]
Three Poems – Jacqueline Morse
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 11:42 — 3 Comments
Frost Flowers “Welcome to nowhere,†they tell you. Here the regret runs in rivers, deep like the wounds we bear. Here sorrow grows beside graves, lilac covered eulogies never given and you hold your apologies in your arms. They tell you to plant, so you dig. With your hands in the cold dirt, your fingernails weather the work. Past the roots of other people’s grief, you lay down your discrepancies, your, I’m sorry I never cried. You pat the fresh dirt over them. Maybe in a better world, I’m a better daughter. You let the air bite your dry skin. […]
Apnea – Betty Stanton
Sunday, March 27, 2016 2:27 — 0 Comments
I listen to him breathing until he stops suddenly in a gagging gasp, then silence that stretches too long before he begins to breathe again. The doctors say it is complex – tissue in the back of his throat collapsing, relaxing when it ought to tighten, his brain sending the wrong messages to the muscles that control his breath. He was tested. Sleeping pills in a strange bedroom, the slick pads of monitors taped to his skin, each breath a line in a computer. Afterward, he slept with a machine, worried when he would twist and turn that the thick […]
Barbarisms – Chelsea Dingman
Monday, February 29, 2016 11:55 — 0 Comments
No one wants to take the coffin-born fetus from the barn. From between the mare’s legs. They lay in tandem, their deaths a pact between bodies. Here, where all love ends in a gasp of cold air. In a house that knows only this cruel season. While I wait behind wood stalls and glass windows to see what becomes of a body. While I mouth the wrong names for gods. For another stillborn child, as my body stayed warm. As I was able to push her towards dying. As I kissed her slick forehead, blue eyelids. Perhaps, dream and memory […]
Virginity is a man’s idea – Erica Brunner
Monday, February 22, 2016 9:09 — 1 Comment
Lemongrass steam in the shower Chain myself to myself Let it blurt My body is a wire I know where to push Pine scented candles black silk pillowcase I’m not trying to keep my pussy tight Studded chokers Clematis through the trellis Lilacs in the back- yard
Three Poems – Dave Wheeler
Tuesday, February 2, 2016 12:08 — 0 Comments
American Voyeur Story All my screens glow tonight: trying to keep up with Ryan Murphy’s new product, while eying my ruddy neighbor tending toilette across the way, my mind compromised by lust left untied, cries for bright asylum from the comfort of my bed. Bootlegged episodes stream as I follow memes, hashtags, window dressing, window again, and noting ideas for a new poem I want to call Zachary Quinto but won’t; his name tastes too dangerous, like urgent secrets whispered during climax. Besides, the neighbor’s lights are out, and Evan Peters’s in his briefs again. And so am I, describing […]
What am I?
Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies
Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;
Scientists can't find me.
Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—
Remind me:
The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…
Tick, Tock: Divine me.
-- Richard Kenney
