Poetry

When I Met Sharon Olds She Told Me to Write A Poem About LBJ’s Penis

Sasha Debevec-McKenney

Gather
the video girls. Tell them to twerk to this …

The Hell Test (Seven Springs)

Daniel Poppick

I had been raised as a Reform Jew—in other words, an agnostic worshipper of narrative …

Don't Let Me Down

Sarah Trudgeon

My husband says he doesn’t really like
short stories, says only novels
capture the human experience.

For Alain

Anaïs Duplan

I missed my father. I ate wax in my impatience.

Information Desk

Robyn Schiff

You are an American Girl. Here you are in
an American Poem …

Worry

Vidyan Ravinthiran

His father’s fists turned him mild as a Jain
to his son, me.

Leviathan

Vidyan Ravinthiran

your phone is flashing with a work email;
our jobs aren’t safe and we still rent.

Study of Two Figures (Agave/Pentheus)

Monica Youn

She said it was an Asian thing and then they stopped asking.

Four Days

Cornelius Eady

Since it didn’t happen the evening
Of whatever the hell Emmett Till did;

Deep Song

Cornelius Eady

These mother-fuckers,
These mother-fuckers
Won’t let me sing.

Sestina

William Virgil Davis

Tonight, there are no stars.
This huge hooded dark
is like a deep sleep

The Night’s Cascade

Garrett Hongo

Lunch breaks, summer I was 20 clerking for the City, I’d sit on marble benches
across from the glass palace of DWP, over at the Mark Taper,

Oracle

Warren Slesinger

The water worried me
when the gray face that floated over it
in lines and patches to the shore

Easier Done

Constantine Contogenis

I give her chances all the time — not to make
her the mom for me. But I’m just passing through
her stop, on a middle track, seeing her go left
across my window while she stands on the platform,

Pax

Richard Kenney

So, Love, when that celebrated clarifier,
Chemotherapy, calls back—for us,

Afterlife

Richard Kenney

On time to the strike of a silent bell
inside the chapel of the cell

The Southwest Part of the Truth

Ioanna Carlsen

It’s true and it’s not true, it’s partly the light
that makes the bone-colored clouds
seem to web in shadows down the mountains,

My Enemy

David Danoff

Assassin, saboteur
inside me, let me be
able to endure
what you do to me.

Sunday with George

Elisabeth Murawski

They twirl and spin,
laughing, the almond trees
in blossom, her little one
humming a tune from Warsaw.

Eight Radioactive Tableaux (with Venus and Adonis)

Justin Quinn

There are no clouds. Thunder out of nowhere.
The boar herd at a gallop through the woods.
Haunch to haunch twisting through the brush and weeds
like shoals through seas, like starlings through the air.

The Reef

Rachel Trousdale

Just because it’s made doesn’t mean it’s anything
but natural. A thin line skirting the shore, no matter
how long, it appears tiny in the extent of
the ocean it inhabits, the water that is the only thing