PAULINE BISSELL
Look: / I once believed my blood ran blue in my body, just because my veins told me so. We keep telling ourselves little lies. We’re not supposed to believe them, but I do….Continue Reading Illusioned
Illusioned
Category: Poetry
Remembering infinity (maybe)
CAELEN MCQUILKIN
This past January, I spent a lot of time reading children’s books — Pete the Cat, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goosebumps, Blueberries for Sal. Turning through their brightly illustrated pages of blueberry bushes, ghosts and monsters, and the hungry caterpillar’s array of food, I remembered doing the same thing as a child…Continue Reading Remembering infinity (maybe)
Resurrection Ferns
SONIA CHAJET WIDES
waving forests carpet tree branches / trunks, Dragon scales and hair sprouting / sometimes so dense that the bark is made invisible / the tree / becomes a tower gorgeous / fractal ferns…Continue Reading Resurrection Ferns
Drawing lines in the sand
GRACE ESCOE
I draw a line / My finger digs deep into the sand taking out a nice long straight line / That isn’t really my own even though I made it / The line that I cannot cross / The line that keeps me from making…Continue Reading Drawing lines in the sand
A Cross Walk In a Labyrinth
DUSTIN COPELAND
My mother said that the pedestrian bridge over arrow-straight Route 1 was finally finished and that we were going to stop to talk a walk over it and my brother said what, why…Continue Reading A Cross Walk In a Labyrinth
Good Life
FAHIM ZAMAN
John Borges, we would love to award you, / Before you leave, for a good life / Lived, Johnny – / If not for a few objections. // Let’s see here, ah, at four some years just, / You cursed in Church…Continue Reading Good Life
WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE
GABBY AVENA
we had to learn to share, my sister-and-i. / older by a year, she laid claim to the color purple. there was only one color left for little girls. i hated pink, but it was mine: my-pink, her-purple….Continue Reading WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE
Km:mk
MEL ARTHUR
what do you feel in the silence / what do you feel in the warmth / what do you feel in the center of your being / whatdoyoufeel between / silence what–wheredoyoufeel / the warmth lies…Continue Reading Km:mk
(Night)Blind
TAPTI SEN
“রাতকানা” she calls them, / the fools who would return home too late, / trampling over paddy fields and marshy soil / feet caked just enough to miss awaiting rough cement…Continue Reading (Night)Blind
A Sovereign / Two Bodies
AIDAN COOPER
Her Prayer like a touch and boiling / Shiver turning the dust-clouds into rain. // He stands before a lectern named Wash / Where he uncoils ribbons from the holes / He cut through his fingertips the callouses…Continue Reading A Sovereign / Two Bodies
About a place between places
CAELEN MCQUILKIN
[…] the desert hues that usually fade into the background fill the entire landscape, and I wonder, what happens when the whole world around you becomes the colors that usually uplift other things?…Continue Reading About a place between places
Connect
GRACE ESCOE
Great Chasm / An inch filled with a single board / Yet still vast / Yet still devoid // Concrete / Loads of hardened gray / Pillars of stone / All to endeavor / To contain You…Continue Reading Connect
阿嬤, 我想你
EVELYN CHI
To be loved / Is to wake up to a bowl of steaming hot 稀飯 / Tender, bright orange 地瓜 floating / In a sea of glistening 白飯, / To have the tablemat set out already…Continue Reading 阿嬤, 我想你
Going Back
BLUMA HAMMARHEAD
Here is– the monument, / The bare room heavy with artifacts: / Strange velvet balls, stacks / Of letters, papers, / Old journals full of hypotheticals…Continue Reading Going Back
Skies Beyond Skies
PAULINE BISSELL
That was the week the grapes were swelling and bruising / Purple, dust-seasoned. Again / We filled our pockets until the grapes, sun-burnt / And sun-ripened, burst…Continue Reading Skies Beyond Skies
A Strand of Opportunity
TRISTAN MOORE
“How do you think I got lice?” / My client turns her head to an angle, eagerly awaiting a response / I can’t help but think, “How the hell would I know? I’m just here to get rid of it.”…Continue Reading A Strand of Opportunity
Broken Black Heart
MIKAYAH PARSONS
Broken Black heart. / Tattered Black heart. / Broken Black fish. / Battered Black fish. / Black fish out of water. // I offered my Black heart on a silver platter, / And they took it for the slaughter….Continue Reading Broken Black Heart
Sea of Sorrow
TIIA MCKINNEY
Sparkling dark blue waters violently crashed over my head, / They pinned me under their strong currents, forcefully grabbing me in a chokehold / I desperately inhaled, trying to taste the salty air on my tongue,…Continue Reading Sea of Sorrow
Ruminations
ZOE ALARCON
You would approach your mother’s bed / Afraid of an intruder / Now you approach it / Afraid of yourself / Hoping she can save you from eternal tinnitus / Drown it forever with a peaceful sonata …Continue Reading Ruminations
the breakfast date (break, fast!)
SAM SPRATFORD
before i learned to swerve down / narrow city streets— / i fell / i fell in love with the existentialists’ sooty prose / peering into an opium abyss and seeing my reflection in obsidian and…Continue Reading the breakfast date (break, fast!)
I Broke My English
PRISCILLA LEE
Λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, scan my pinking flesh, / dented divots from my inky pen, no / 墨 to drink. Excuse me, I play with babbles, / singing your scribbles. // Draw it out. Pray, jazz with me. Pluck the hairy / strokes and Trace calligraphy.
…Continue Reading I Broke My English
Hamadryad
PAULINE BISSELL
So, the will still bends / Beyond the sentimental / And you, still / Wielding the fissured, the fragmented, / The crumbling under and cracking apart….Continue Reading Hamadryad
Broken Hinges
GRACIE ROWLAND
I slammed the door in Hope’s face and told Her / I was better off alone, my pride too brazen to realize that good intentions / Matter more than harsh words spoken over late night calls. / I was too ashamed to apologize back then, too ashamed of the broken hinges I left. …Continue Reading Broken Hinges
Not Let Go of Hope
GRACIE ROWLAND
I dance under the imagined warmth of the moonlight, / Twirl from one end of the rose garden to the other / Until my head is spinning, spinning, with the / Stars like a laughing tapestry above my head. / I forget about funerals and fallacies, / Genocide and god under the moonlight….Continue Reading Not Let Go of Hope
Lamplight
LELAND CULVER
Your face I thought your face I wished your face would long have left me, gone away, above. / Unharmed, although below I go, except for silent wishing, occasionally fishing for unhurried hypothetic love. / But glinting in the dark, your eyes espy my every dreaming thought like burning violet embers I remember once were blue….Continue Reading Lamplight
On Robert C. Solomon (1942 – 2007)
ROSS KILPATRICK
Sometimes I think about / Nietzsche scholar Rob Solomon / Who died of a hole in his heart / Just past security / In the Zürich Flughafen / Did he bless himself / And wish that he’d live over again…Continue Reading On Robert C. Solomon (1942 – 2007)
The Persimmon Tree
KEI LIM
A lifetime’s worth of spinning, / and all virtue stumbles, / enmity circling pupils like rings of ebony / ink the bark of the persimmon tree. / Branches beckon like the arms of / my mother, calloused by the abandonment / of men who knew her fragility …Continue Reading The Persimmon Tree
Top Ten Reasons Why Black Boys Play Basketball
KALIDAS SHANTI
1) Another boy can throw his ass within the pocket of your hips in public. 2) It is a way to show off one’s new kicks, and say, “I got more after wearing these down,” even if that is far from the truth. 3) We battle with the ball, so the court is where we learn what it is to win, what it is to lose. We no longer have to jump a boy, mouth loaded with threats and a knife or hammer at our hips….Continue Reading Top Ten Reasons Why Black Boys Play Basketball
On Concrete and Basketball
CAELEN MCQUILKIN
In order to break, something once had to be whole / in a mosaic // Sharp cracked edges bring one another to light, make themselves cohesive not in spite of but because of the splits and gaps and shattered spaces between, an art form beautiful because it is broken and put back together…Continue Reading On Concrete and Basketball
There is no stopping Her
A’CORA HICKSON
red button / bloodshot / blood’s hot / stinging of the eye / burning sensation / a very familiar sensation…Continue Reading There is no stopping Her