Worry Bone Always shaking my tree Always rattling my bones Stirs up the natives tending my temple grooming my home They get no peace They never feel at home Worry bone preaches doom on every street He’s a guest on every show Thinks God burnt trifles into stone Swears disaster lurks ravenous behind every promising … More Worry Bone, by Hans Hetrick
1 of 0 if you read this as if you read this as if you read this as if you read this as if you read this as if you read this as Doom Abaca, dead; a cab, a decade fagged, a hijacked lima bean, an opal ‘q,’ ransomed; a strumpet, and … More Three poems by Jon Pierce
Dear Watcher, 1 Be calm. Categorize by level of threat. File by style. A red jagged letter needles my skin. Tell myself this is a joke. Linger in the hallway after school. Back pressed against the lockers. Look left. Look right. Wait for the invisible man who hides like sin and speaks like fire. Why … More Dear Watcher, by Jenn Powers
Boats She stands at the edge of the dock thinking to set off for anywhere even the redeye of the storm. But the boat drifts dragging a net of obligations, heavy barnacle gowns clanking a train behind her. Because the question is always … More Two Poems by Genevieve DeGuzman
People have been dying since people were people. I’m buying a lottery ticket so I can afford to take every assault rifle off the market, drop them into the middle of the Atlantic. Imagine an octopus at a shooting range: goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn goddamn. Goddamn. Everyone who dies while someone is writing … More Guns Are People, Too, by C.J. Miles
I saw someone nail the moon into the pavement in Northwood last night. They ripped the plywood off and splattered constellations no one had ever heard of. Watched as the stars and the carpenters went shifting, writhing, dancing on top of black waves. They cluster into the nails, spiraling away, winking as they sink into … More Star Scatters by Laura Pastorino
How do I live with your ghost? Dishes in the sink, voices in the walls. This house is not big enough for three. In my defense, his hands. In my defense, his lips. In my defense, his perjury. In my defense, I wish to die so I may come back to you.
Standing in the Garden of Myself Where My Lover Misplaced a Rusting Trowel sweet nectar of firebush plumbing the fraudulent ____________________________________this argument from broken deities __________________does it matter? ________________________as light unspools across the thorax of _________________________________________inevitability___________________wading _____course you don’t know me _________________________________________________in this winter-colored dress, my wine-streaked cheeks, their hasty bloom _____________________a zebra longwing … More 3 Poems by Ashley Kunsa
“there is no shape he wants to occupy more than his own, the shape he once held…” … More RW, #67: Three Years Later, by Orion Redgrave
YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN BURIED AND I DID NOT KNOW YOU WERE DEAD I don’t remember if we had been playing cards but once we sat at your parents’ kitchen table and sometime during that night you told me about your sister in the Florida hospital none of us knew you had a sister We … More 3 Poems by John Findura
