Poetry
This is Thin Air Online’s Archive of pieces that are classified as poetry, both long form and short.
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October by Yana Kane
I wake up to whiffles of swift wings, a back-and-forth of whistles and trills—a flock of starlings is alighting in the crown of the old birch tree outside my window. Dawn light pours through the lacework of branches that still retains some fluttering, translucent leaves. The tree no longer shades my window against sunlight. Instead,…
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May 5th By Mark Katrinak
Apricot trees stripped of anticipated fruitare left without their ornamental ways.High-desert’s cloak, post-equinoctial frostis gone, but unforgiven: another yearof barrenness is born—peach, cherry, plum;blooms—wedding-white, wind-torn—annulled.Junipers offering berries, a go-to gin,predominate the arid landscape, wind—intensifying—loosens peeling paint,labellum parching over time. One mustsubsist upon another sweetness ripeningwhen summer brings its heat and barking dogs,Sirius skies. The sunset…
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Cuttings by Alba Newmann Holmes
The gardenercognizant of thorns bends back the boughto cut an end editor of stems I see her glovesfalse roses printed on acid yellowor fluorescent green the dark palm laminatein tougher stuff. Yesterday when we walkedbeneath the overpass the mud was fillingwith what the snow became it ran and hidbeside the creek no one was saying…
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To Impossible Words by Elaine Katz
Being put in a refrigerator for two years does havocto time, drops you out.My arm is a rag at my side.My blue eyes turn brown.I study the world outside, the way streaks of rain twistthe pavement that had always been straight, smear the bark of the alder. Too…
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Time Does Not Exist by Ahrend Torrey
but aging is real. Like leaves descendfrom the sycamore, how they turn a deepumber, then crisp, curl, crunch—when passersby step over them. Take your own skin for example: how itscrevices become more pronounced,how it begins to thin, bruise more easilywith age. Look deep into the mallard’s eye: it’s somehowreached an astonishing number; its colornot as…
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Finding the Words by Deron Eckert
Watching from afar, horses jumpwith what I would call grace,but it’s more than that wordcould possibly affordthe kind of beauty that couldstop gravity for whole seconds,granting a thousand poundsfreedom to glide through the airand land as light as a blossomreleased from a locust tree in May.If I were French, I’d say gracehowever you say grace…
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“Tournament of Roses” by Karen Holman
A lake told me she defines skyas where I go when I leave my body: dictionary, my astrolabe: compass to pinthis New Year’s second to its focusbefore it winks into the future. Words ask, what are our definitionswhile tongues of flame undulate abovetheir apostolic heads, “Like each of you,” I explain,“an egg lights up at…
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“Viewfinder” by Dennis Cummings
I watch you now as I look backward throughthe decades that flicker like shuffled frames.Your brothers are all at war, gone in the battleshipsthat glide past empty atolls. Your sisters vanish on the backs of motorcyclesor fade into the lives of grocery clerkswith Coke bottle glasses.Your father stares into the abyss of his fedora. At…
