Archives

After Ekphrasis

by on Jul 28, 2016

the net collapsed around us
fibers of rope burned our skin

where was that old stove
the one you wrote about
or was it me

the class clapped as you read
your long machine
would you call it automatic

the algorithm of your evenings
or do I misremember

the time we read Barthes
pages from Jabès

was that pleasure that you gave
the back of the neck a place to settle
or was it bliss

the paper cuts around us
fibers fixing on the pen

when did you write me out
the margins stretching
then folding over—

where do you keep
all our blood-red ink
made black

 

—
Marie Landau is an editor at the University of New Mexico Press and a member of Dirt City, an Albuquerque-based literary collective. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Yellow Chair Review, SOFTBLOW, Bird’s Thumb, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere.

The Elephant in the Room

by on Jul 27, 2016

There’s little room to breathe in here

the elephant sucks out all the air
through its massive trunk
and presses the couple to the walls.

They stare into each other,
their eyes message
what their lips cannot say:

there’s an elephant in the room.

There’s little room for elephants here
where villages expand into the plains
and poachers gun down whole herds.

Dying elephants suck air
through flattened trunks
fading eyes hold a message

there’s something we need to talk about here.

 

—
Juliet Wilson is an adult education tutor and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, UK. She blogs at Crafty Green Poet and can be found on Twitter @craftygreenpoet. Her poetry and short stories appear in various places online.

Multilingual

by on Jul 26, 2016

I drink tea with spiders. There is never
enough milk. The spiders complain about
the heat, but I tell them to blow across
their cups or just have patience and wait.

On sunny days, birds glide overhead, apples
swell and hang heavy from trees. I can say
these truths in three languages,
the words inscribed on the inside of my skull.

This makes travel easier to many parts
of the world. Here’s what I’ve observed:
on rainy days, girls go to the movies.
They don’t go with boys or with their pets,

because they want to hear the film stars
snarl. The stars eat apples dropped from
the beaks of birds. They drink a tea brewed
from webs. They blow across their cups

to calm the howling pets. They have gold
flecked eyes and travel far, speaking tongues
of spice and flame. In darkness the girls spin
on their seats like small tornadoes in a glass jar.

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press, and Family Reunion, forthcoming from Big Table Publishing.

Texas Life Story, Six Words

by on Jul 21, 2016

My life is Texas, long stretches,
a mixed bag of land so
vast, I could run forever and
you would never know me from
one solitary place to the other.

Contentment is in movement. I roam
through plains so plain and wide,
mirages begin to look like other
mirages begin to look like me.

Each year a different region, each
day a new valley, but if
the spot is comfortable, with adequate
food, water, sun, room, and protection,
I may try to set camp,
claim my space, dig my heels
into crumbling ground until I cannot
fight the wolves off any longer.

Texas is like a marriage, they
say. A long one, and nobody
ever leaves her. I sure can’t.
They say Texas is overdue freedom,
and she is, so long as
you love Texas and come home
to her often. She loves you
but she is a demanding wife.

 

—
Lisa Bubert is a writer currently living in Denton, TX with her drummer husband and very distraught cat.

Acutance

by on Jul 19, 2016

Pull in the nets,
swollen from seven passes off the Gulf.

White boots squeak on wet deck,
knots loosen and shrimp slide
out of twine, onto wood.

What rolled underfoot
now buzzes with shell and fin.

Sorting bins fill with overs and unders.
Lemon fish are swept into the hold for bait.

Stingrays flop to the sides
and are shoveled over,
reminders that days could be worse.

 

—
Jack Bedell is currently a Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are Bone-Hollow, True: New & Selected Poems, Call & Response, Come Rain, Come Shine, What Passes for Love and At the Bonehouse, all published by Texas Review Press (a member of the Texas A&M Press Consortium). He recently returned from a wonderful week at the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference.

Westbound PA Turnpike

by on Jul 18, 2016

Sunny humid hills clustered with leaves, puffed with bursting gusto,
the corn high from all the rain we’ve had, mist gathered in the meadows.

Cows collect in batches of milk and coal. The sky takes charge ,
vapor congeals, dense billows, like that it’s over you, a freight train edged by sunlight.

Slipping past the empty rust-belt plant, rain splotches the car,
shatters thin oil slicks with darts, as I vault over the Susquehanna.

Rain swallows cars, trucks, bridge and river. I’m slashing vainly through,
but the rain folds back, drapes layers down, then it’s all you can do

to grip steady and not leap the guard rail. On the west bank,
rain pulls the shower curtain — elongated ridges like thighs

and vapors of orange sundown ripple along torqued rock cuts.
The concrete vein draws me towards a pumping heart weak from blood loss.

The houses are drawn farther apart, the traffic nodules isolated in
little spurts of motion — pulse with instinct and intention.

Engine cylinders rotate 2100 times a minute — like our hearts, slamming and firing
forward, from point A to B. Cue the Ronnettes, be my baby now.

 

—
James Esch teaches literature and creative writing at Widener University. He is editor of Turk’s Head Review and the founder of Spruce Alley Press and a co-advisor of Widener’s online magazine for undergraduate writers, The Blue Route. His recent publications include work in Dr. T. J. Eckleburg Review, Stoneslide Corrective, and Black Heart Magazine. He blogs at eschorama.com.

composing for voice & breath

by on Jul 15, 2016

for Ilario

compose me a symphony
using only your voice : let
it boom & bassoon, cello
a treble & be thin like a
violin

speak of love & sin, of
giving up & giving in, of
how low a solo can go &
when to begin an opus’
ending

across staves rave about
your day, how it ends too
soon &, mesmerised, i’ll
listen to your tune & even
sigh

 

—
Scott-Patrick Mitchell is an Australian poet whose latest collection, inner pity poems (2016), is available now through Department of Poetry. For more information please visit www.facebook.com/scottpatrickmitchellpoet

Gossamer

by on Jul 14, 2016

gos-sa-mer \  n  [ME gossomer, fr. gos  goose + somer  summer]  1 : and if wings could wing : and if summer could last : and if we could be as soft and careful as milkweed air :  as in, too soon we grab the net or nail and try to pin things down when  2 : it’s enough to know they are there1   3 : and right here in the middle of writing this, I get an e-mail from Orbitz, subject line: You’re so fly  3 : Dear Orbitz, how did you know?   4 : because the wind is blowing and the yellow leaves are flying and, I am so fly  5 : here with you under the available sky, a silver airplane2  &

 

 

1I think, as birds fly past our morning window

2two ravels of [goose + summer] geese

 

—
Jeanie Tomasko is the author of a few poetry books, most recently (Prologue), the recipient of an Editor’s Choice award from Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series, and Violet Hours (Taraxia Press), a collection of the antics of a unique little girl. She can be found on her website (jeanietomasko.com), walking around somewhere near Lake Superior with her husband, Steve, or enjoying the antics of her cats at home, where she endeavors to always have a bottomless honey jar, garlic from the garden and bees in the front yard hyssop.

Compline

by on May 27, 2016

“Will the bird rise flaming out of broken light?” ~ Karen An-hwei Lee

When your arms encircled my waist from behind,
I thought a bird had come to light on my shoulder—

and I could not speak immediately for feeling
how densely overgrown the floor of the forest had become,

how at odd times in the night a ringing begins
on the shore of one ear and echoes across to the other.

You walked across the barrier and met me at the gate,
and it took minutes for us to realize we were in tears.

Now, days after, I look around: everything the eye
picks out wants to be the color of a sunset, of clementines.

Imagine small words like fragments of bone:
ten of them strung together are called a mystery;

and I know I am unqualified, but sometimes
I dare to address the future in intimate terms.

 

—
Luisa A. Igloria is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015.