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
Recipient of the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015), Ross Gay shapes language, roots fused with variegated ash, to chronicle experiences, the profane crafted sacred through simple gestures of doing and undoing, buttoning and unbuttoning, while resisting the need to dissect his artistry with “an X-Acto knife.” When asked what … More Lovingly Grateful: An Interview with Ross Gay; Interview conducted by Laine Derr
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
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
Volunteer Opportunity by Liz Drayer We’re so thrilled you’ve offered to donate your time to our cause and know how you value the privilege to serve The police background check is just part of the process please visit your neighborhood sheriff who’ll make sure you’re felony free and that “sexual predator” isn’t a suffix attached to … More Volunteer Opportunity
Battery Life by Daniel Schwartz “Much we have to fear, big-mouth beside me!” —Osip Mandelstam This could be any era, and by any I mean none of them swept under the loss that was our decade we remember the sky’s oldest quotation marks and the weeks of holding our breath to keep other people from … More Battery Life
