Poetry

Because of their format, several poems that appear in the current issue are included as pdfs. To read them, click on their titles below or on the right side of this page.

Jar Song
Don Bogen

 

How could I calm the ache
that drifted through my sleep?
A plain ceramic jar,
rounded at the lip,

The Sandy Hook Fire
Henry Hart

 

Like a monk hunched over gilded letters,
my brother studied flies hatching on the Pootatuck,
picked a red and gold Parmachene Belle
from a metal box, tied it to a tippet

On Atrazine
Zoë Hitzig

 

“Well I drank it,” says the scientist
When they ask him what he has
Done with the contaminated
Water. “There is less in the lab’s

Proxy Means
Zoë Hitzig

 

A test. In a morning
Blue suit the Census taker
Drops his credentials
And picks them up

Nostalgia
James Arthur

 

The museum was closed, so no one saw
the statue of Adam
tumble to the floor, and break. No one saw
the plywood pedestal
 

Prospects from the Palisades
John Koethe

 

We’re always other people, whoever they are.
I’m grateful to poets’ biographies—a genre nearly as
Obsolete as its subjects—for helping me make myself up,

Wide Margin Love Poem
Susan Barba

 

Let me
let you
make me
proud.

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—