I trust you to say everything I know but never know I know until I write it. I trust you to be born…
I’ve had enough of poets who repeatedly proclaim they’re poets or compose sestinas just to show they can but never see that wordplay’s not the…
Sell only the best for as much as you can and make it appear like a bargain from God. It takes as much work to…
Not that her innocence and age were an excuse. . . After all, the girl could hold her own in argument,…
Including my late father, we are four plus a far distant cousin we’ve never met who have the same first and…
A Swedish linguist predicts the death of language itself, beginning with English. Most visions with apocalyptic endings leave me cold,…
Forget the birthdays. For me you’re younger than ever. Nothing is truer than that. Tonight I thought of life without…
They tromp on stage in fours with amplified guitars low slung and aimed at fans who clap and yelp and ought to…
French without question—a smile that’s nine parts mirth and one part doubt, the chin untucked and the left eyebrow arched a…
well you know, Charlie Parker, he didn’t just jump into bebop, he came out of some lean, sad blues, and when he did those…
I took the safety off of my Glock, then I closed the door to my safe room. Sherry as usual, was brushing her hair…
wind blows fog settles on my brow – its mist sends damp coolness across my face I recall you and your fresh skin taunt…
Some kilometers under abandoning the night a sea of clouds widens its deserted delight fake dunes, fake mountains that their mood change as…
it was in the sultan’s harem she wore sheer tan her face darker than the olives of cordoba, her fingers long, the softness of…
mysteries creeping in lining up pushing one another you gather them in the palm of your hand you don’t believe in explanations one…
Beneath the moon I am consumed with memories. Love and death are all that’s left worth remembering. Insects under glass, a diorama of my…
The old stone wall that stood between our property has come down in the prosperity of our years. Flat stones and round dragged along…
Dear cupcake, I know that if I spread you open wide and stick my tongue inside you’ll surrender your sweet cream surprise to me….
“My experiences have taught me that people are in urgent need of respect, truth, and warmth. In my poetry, I strive to express my…
The spring after her older daughter died, Jane Musick took her younger daughter, Sadie, up to Wilderness Road and told her it was time…
Being the daughter of Syrian immigrants who made their way to Texas in the mid 1950’s, and being the only child of theirs born in…
Subtropical-Mediterranean climate blessed the university-owned apartments, and, from Mary Liu’s studio window, magnolia branches, swinging with the summer breeze, partially veiled the view. She breathed…
Reviews in from South Africa, Israel, Turkey Book of Sins by Palestinian/Israeli poet Nidaa Khoury published in the Caribbean ST. MARTIN, Caribbean (2011)—Book of…
at the zoo today a lion died
I saw it take its last roar
exhale through opened
mouth – tongue out
dried and crying
I was watching before it
hit the ground –
calling the ladies to its side
a final valiant breeding effort
a final event to pass on a kingdom
a legacy of strength.
and who was there as it stumbled –
children [...]
distance between us climbs further and further upwards, beyond aspens, evergreens, spruces, pines, beyond timberlines, currents of Rio Colorado sweep away those…
I refill his glass. He says, In Death no emperors hunt you down–they’re busy writing memoirs frogs won’t read. When living, I faced exile. …
I glanced over at the table where he sat, buttons undone in neat gasps of air, their open mouths as surprised as I was….
Climbing this nightmare peak, I shift up through layers of chilled gauze, like meringue, like ice chips, piercing up into a sky that is…
She attacks with claws crafted out of wall slabs. A pot she bathed in hate in her hands, streaking its white ceramic with red…
The accuser is veiled in shadows, in curtains of silence that will not be parted. He carries a stone of monosyllables, taut against his…
You found poetry in trails of ants, in dassies hiding in the rocks, in any part of this, our creature world. You delighted…
O calm Atlantic, you beguile me. You lick the sand in lazy laps today, but you have been and you have seen much harsher….
Desire cannot know itself, confusing need with economic fiat, making what is natural lurid, merging cortical with corporeal, material desire failed. To…
Looking south, I know that no more land will rise – this is the end, the point at which Prince Henry’s followers transgressed the unseen…
Long John Silver With eyes aged like stars In my mosque, on a crutch Subhana Rabbiyal A’alah I whisper past bent knees He has…
Today, I will look in the mirror to see only one unshaven beast. Today, they’ll offer me razorblades and foam to prepare myself….
I met you by the shore. Your enormous body was left for the sharks and the Japanese tourists. You were taking sun-baths with…
Let me look up and see nothing, let the shells and the screams reverberate fearfully, let me feel the shaking of the earth and say…
Julianna Baggott, http://www.juliannabaggott.com, who also writes as N.E. Bode and Bridget Asher, is the author of eighteen books, including Which Brings Me To You, co-written…
by Mark Goldblatt (Greenpoint Press, 2010) Sloth Air the color of khaki, soot on windows prismed with sunlight, neon-skewed dust, the smell of engine fluid…
Mick Greene is an actor who does well enough in his chosen profession until he loses control of his drug habit, has a meltdown on…
Red had wasted himself on the pipe all night and was rummaging the fibers of the carpet for little imagined chunks of crack, his…
Our spirit is inside the baseball rising into the light. —Robert Bly In the summer of his forty-fifth year, a time when…
Moss first saw the little woman at the village’s waterfall where children swung on a knotted rope lashed to a tree branch. A tiny…
They lived in the woods for months at a time – no cell phones, no Internet access, and the closest general delivery was twenty-five…
The most ridiculous thing happened to me at the coffee shop yesterday. I only went there to get some work done, because it’s virtually…
Yellowman, our leader, and the rest of my mates, are gone, and I am alone – a rat at the mercy of the hawks in Benin City….
The month for me is April! Where the old landscape falls, where the new saps from its root. A bit of tumult’s heard to squall,…
The film can only be black and white, old and grainy. The people must flicker, fade, blur, be nothing but a prayer shawl, a…
white acacias desperately stretch their arms persuading me to stay don’t cry wonderful trees my departure only means an attempt to return …