Two Poems – Rita Banerjee
Tuesday, September 8, 2015 9:53 — 0 Comments
Please Listen and Do Not Return (after Nick Carraway and Tom Joad) East She, portrait in miniature, she I said I had found in my youth a her, a when men built dreams with hands still, I saved a lock of hers, kept her like the harbor lights, ship sounds at night, I knew light, green-back and otherwise could bring me closer— to that mind daffodil colored— I wondered again the meaning of East, the mean, what emotions went with living, with home things travel through valleys of ash, I walk in gray and dead houses, her eyes porcelain undirected […]
Shin Yu Pai’s Poetry Orchard
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 9:40 — 1 Comment
Shin Yu Pai’s latest project, HEIRLOOM, is a site-specific public art project where she printed language on antique apples in Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park, Seattle.Using vinyl stencils and the light of the sun, she “burned” words into the peels of ripening apples. The words on the apples, she says, represent the titles of individual sections from a long poem (below) written in the form of an abecedarian, or alphabet poem, which explores the history of it and our human connection to it. (Image above by Thendara Kida-Gee) Jake Uitti: So tell me about your latest project! Shin Yu Pai: I just […]
Google Autocomplete Poem – Nate Brantingham
Monday, August 17, 2015 10:10 — 1 Comment
This is the type of poem you look at happening for a moment and then immediately situate yourself so you can see the whole thing transpire. The questions asked here are the ones we ask ourselves - questions about appearance, God, family. The piece plays with doubt, but the sort of doubt that arrises within an accusatory society living and breathing all around. How do we fit in? And does poetry have any place left? Nate Brantingham turns the simple and common, here, into beautiful art that lasts in our minds, transforming these moments of doubt into moments of community.
I Had My First Kiss! – Elizabeth Austen
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 9:53 — 1 Comment
My niece’s text arrives as the newscaster
RIVER SONG – Jonathan Simkins
Monday, July 6, 2015 12:49 — 0 Comments
You visit me in the moment of waking With a syringe full of river water. If the river God is in my veins His burning is colossal and ferocious. I hear ten thousand women singing a song I know I’ve heard but cannot name. You have the face of a hundred spiders. Your furry arms glisten and tremble. You guide my hand to your leg, And as you dig your nails into my chest The sound of wings roars from your mouth, A dam breaks in some infernal region, The clock hands spin backwards, And moths pour in through the […]
Two Poems – Johnnie Lee Walters Jr. aka “Stackwell”
Monday, June 22, 2015 13:13 — 2 Comments
I Just Want 2 Be Remembered Time passes, making it hard Not 2 think of what could’ve been/ & as many have left my side… I can’t help but think of what would’ve been/ I Regret…But then, God shows me situations worse/ Making any Self-Pity Only work in reverse/ My “Experiance” Has become my Blessing and a Curse/ From Learning what NOT 2 do, Mostly by… Doing it ALL 1st/ & I’m HAPPY 2 be alive, But when my time comes for Passing/ I hope I’m Remembered 4 how I Gave without asking…/ Remembered 4 Laughing, sometimes 2 keep from […]
Two Poems – Pete Mason
Monday, June 1, 2015 12:22 — 0 Comments
BRIGHAM ROAD AND THE FOLLOWING SUMMER At the clinic they gave you a paper bag of pills and none of us opened our mouths on the drive home. Our apartment full of flies born in empty beer bottles that were left by the fridge. Black tape hanging like streamers from the ceiling to gather tiny bodies in with some chemical pretending to be sugar enough to lick. You took the ultrasound from the nightstand, packed it away as carefully as a gift. We stripped the bed to its frame, sheets and comforter put in the back of a rusting van, […]
Cutting – Bismarck Martinez
Monday, May 11, 2015 10:33 — 0 Comments
My father once brought me to the sugar fields Where the border between Haiti and our country Was not clearly marked. He handed me a machete And told me chop, and chop again, the tall stalks. I was careful at first, measuring each sweeping gesture By how far away my father stood and how much air My lungs permitted me to take in and let out. It didn’t take long for the machete to grow light in my hands. I pulled it back and struck down a cane with two swift chops Again, and again, just as he said I […]
James Franco Review and APRIL
Tuesday, March 17, 2015 14:39 — 0 Comments
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.†– Bill Shakespeare Indeed, what is in a name? For the folks at the James Franco Review, who are hosting their first release party tonight at the Hugo House, a name both matters and doesn’t at all. The review, founded by Corinne Manning, reads submissions blind – well, sort of. They read their submissions in fiction and poetry as if all the submitters have the same name. Which name? You guessed it! James Franco. Franco has received lots of attention […]
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
