Poetry

Current

Susan Barba

 

The closest we can come
to the unseen
plumes of scent
spun by a spindle

The Way You Look Tonight

Peter Cameron

 

It chafes you, I know, this
Remorseless penchant for drama
I have. Life is too short

The Light in the Marsh Grass

Jeffrey Harrison

was alive: small creatures aglow and crawling
one after the other down each tall green blade—
thousands of them bending at all angles—

Echo Lake

Nicholas Friedman

You hunker underneath a shaggy fir,
shifting when sunlight shifts its bit of shade,
and eat a single almond every hour.

Flirt

Christina Pugh

The bank of cloud that night was like a smoother
lamb’s wool, a fistful you’d pull to stuff
a pointe shoe for ballet class.  Or maybe the cloud
bank was more like the tiny cotton coverlet

The Staircase

Christina Pugh

A white jar dissolves into the whitish background
that gently presses its narrow form upright.  Morandi’s
ceramics must be manna for the eye, I think.  Here,
their proximity makes several forms seem melded—

Still Life, Mouth of the Vistula

Daniel Bourne

After a while the bird starts to twist
to turn this way and that
as if to show me every side

Unconscious Ode

Ann Keniston

Now that my mother, as others say, has passed,
I like to visit churches that display

the miraculously intact bodies of saints
in glass cases. Sometimes the hem of their carved garment

His Shirt

John Skoyles

The striped shirt drying
on the patio chair—
you can say he wore
that shirt,

self-driving

Laura Marris

when a man has selected himself to live longest of all

there will still be a fleet of Cadillacs to come for him in the night
self-driving from their garage

Living Room

Arthur Vogelsang

It is difficult reading today
Or doing my volunteer work at the hospital or reading.
Do you have anything unbelievable that you have read twice?

Cold Heaven

Elisabeth Murawski

Pink Jackie’s back in the car.
The shot, the slump, the gore.

Watch

Elisabeth Murawski

The sky’s a murky green. You stop the car
in heavy rain to take my hand and pray.
Is this a truce? An end to civil war?

On Turning Ninety

Edmund Keeley

It can be laughable
to stand in a room
and not know why
you came in there,

Mansplaining Oracle

Caki Wilkinson

Hey you, untrue god, fiscal man,
futile man, sour young cad; hey,
yahoo, seducer, family gun nut,

To the Embalmers

G. C. Waldrep

i.m. Mahmoud Darwish

I went into the desert for the velvet flesh of two white fish.
And when the heat of the desert was withdrawn from me

The Completion of Shadows

G. C. Waldrep

Oh friends I am a prison to all that lies within me.
It burns the way phosphorus burns.  It bears the raven’s flag
into the ragged country called by its natives Los Arpas.
 

Darklight

Rosanna Warren

The moon dragged her string-net bag of shadows through the boughs

The Point

Rosanna Warren

My long shadow paces and the skreak of gulls
hauls evening down and furls it along the edge of the lake.

First Crocuses

Donald Platt

They are the colors/of my dead father’s Lenten chasuble,

Margaritas

Knute Skinner

Margaritas tonight,
and I think of our friend Greg.

Julia Hungry

Hannah Louise Poston  

She reconstructs her ruptured orange peel
while telling me about the fancy meal

Peony

Hannah Louise Poston

It’s come unlatched, the sloppy silk fist
unhinging like a jaw as if
to swallow something bigger than itself—

Each Morning

Andy Eaton

During a time of great need
we came easily
under the influence of light–

Avoiding News Along the Coast

Andy Eaton

Along the coast of perpetual breezes
I lay myself down. Half-light slowly
all the way, like the lid of the earth twisted off.
Full contentment may be possible

Bottom

Martha Zweig

You’ll be among the first
to know. You will. You’ll see:
waddling like an emperor’s obesity
ahead of you, sunrise, the future.

Hearse

Martha Zweig

Oops, hit the skid rind, cruel world
slipped a corkscrewy peel
of it’s-about-time.

Hardcore Innocence in Hangzhou, Winter 2015

Julian Gewirtz

We’ve been reading dirty
books, the kind with scurf
in their spines, cracking
their backs over my bed

FL 50’s

Rick McKenzie

This is where a hotel used to be.
Neon made the gin a sea-breeze blue,
Just as if Korea never happened.

Poor Relatives

Robert Morgan

The cloudburst leaves a brown meringue,
a kind of foamy candy on
the pool below the culvert where
the runoff plunged headlong to whip