OCD You’ll break the lamp on your desk, use the shards to stab your cubicle mate. Please, they beg, stop. So you move the lamp to the corner of your desk. A colleague will pass, you’ll slam their face into the lamp, glass on purple lips, what a mess. So you bury the lamp under … More 2 poems by Dani Putney
O Eleanor Your buck tooth smile Thin lips pressed against a pink track of gums Who could have known Your first name was Anna O Eleanor On the way to Babylon a coyote shot between its amber-yellow eyes. How were you … More At the National Portrait Gallery I Make Impossible Requests by Leah Dawson
Before he fell asleep in my arms by the campfire again he saw something in the flames. First a cat, then a monster, then a burning tree, the same he climbed earlier in the afternoon, high enough to look out at Pike’s Peak and see the snow still holding strong in late June, his dad … More Fatherhood Therapy by KG Newman
Pink + White Everyday control. We being pink + white we just nod slow, move north nod again, eyes close. It’s hurricane season everyday. It could all cannonball the same way. It could all shoot up, kneel into something like a birth, no kiss no glory. No telling. No immortality. White Ferrari On eyes, in … More Two poems by Amanda Leahy
candlelight vigil in the gunmetal streets sharp rain sinking into pittsburgh’s deep roots two blocks from your parents’ the synagogue where your mom taught preschool community congregation drowned & drowning the crowd’s gathering silence small fires between bodies we canceled the halloween party to gather at lilly’s for proximity how close to eternity we become … More Tree of Life by James Croal Jackson
BLUE Worse than beauty dying is our letting go of it, sadly, wearily, resigned to its not being enough but tortured by someone else’s enjoying it as if in begrudgery we fashioned for ourselves a world without music or wished for rain to cover the mountains. In age, the sting of hail is a welcome, … More Two poems by Ted Mc Carthy
Debris There is a story bobbing along the blue painted boards hitting the rocks time and time again like a man full of regret, banging his head against the wall. Circling the scattered evidence in their motorboats, they keep asking what happened? But a thousand nails have already started to rust at the bottom of … More Three poems by Johanna Evenson
More than forty years here, each time passing these places, I recall: Farragut Park, I’m performing street theatre here for National Secretaries Day, a feminist play highlighting bias, equal rights and equal pay. My father saw the end of my scene, years later we saw Occupy camped out here. Sheridan Circle, around embassies we hold … More to Washington DC by Ruth Ticktin
I think the end of the world is tomorrow this morning was all granola & coffee grounds, my veins choking on themselves as cinder blocks fall off the building across the street. they say a cigarette takes 7 minutes off your life. calling for an ambulance is a good 2 weeks pay. I’m scared for … More I think the end of the world is tomorrow by Lee Patterson
Mason Jars They’re hip these days, retro in an age of plastic, pre-packaged crap that leaks and unravels, leaving soppy messes on the well-swept floor. My niece used them as beer and wine glasses at her farm to-table wedding, lids carefully collected and stowed away— They are votive holders and vases, emanating light across dining … More Two Poems by Genevieve Creedon
