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Poetry

Poetry, Issue #69

Purification An ode to kidneys / CW: Eating Disorder References If I’m being honest with myself – which I rarely am these days – every attempt to purify this body has destroyed my own temple.             I have knelt at the front of a church and given my heart,       […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #68

AT THE POETRY READING I read the poem about my mother to my mother’s face. In the car, on the interstate, in her 2006 Black Honda Pilot, she says you made me look horrible. She says what an undeserving child. She tells me to feel ashamed. We eat burgers and sea salt fries and drink […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #67

my lover is left-handed I read poems about death & think of my lover. Susan Browne wrote, “2500 left-handed people are killed annually from using right-handed products.”(1) My lover is left-handed. He could be one of them. The man already wears a CPAP, chokes nuggets of pills for diabetes at 38. Where’s the fairness in […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #66

Rhapsody of Icarus where Daedalus is an Orchardman He believed in miracles. He buried a mustard seed in the earth,& watered it every morning & night. For days. & months. &years. & from every seed, there wasa tree. Then, a grove. Then, gravity pulled fruits off their branches. Then, his son, off the branch of a healthy oak tree. The […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #65

last payphone in times square she came up to my eye. i asked to borrow a pen. people attend the removal of the last payphone in times square.  i wrote her number in a note- book stained into lines. a power saw is used for the phone. eulogies are said. first time i called set […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #64

Sonia This is a poem about enlightenment. No, I lied. It’s probably just a poem about Sonia the concierge, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. Sonia is a mystery to me. One day I noticed she was wearing a silver necklace with a Sanskrit symbol on it. There were two swirled, rolling letters. Maybe OM. So Sonia does yoga, I thought, […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #63

Few Exceptions Unaccustomed to my vacant life, I come slowlyuntetheredas if treading on birds. We are imperfectinstruments—I make up my mindto read Ulysses out of spite, again,and pay to spend time in a greenhouse,ironically.Under its ribs, which pushinto the sky,the mist falls across my face, hissing.The fronds of an overgrown cabbagecup my head from above,as […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #62

March Spring wets us with longing.Pale bloom, green fuzz. Mossgrowing in the cracks betweeneverything. Wearing the rainon our faces. This, right now,is the best part: the opening.Thin spray of pink light,I’m opening with you.I’m dew and I’m honey on breadand I’m singing along to the wordsI remember and humming thoseI long ago forgot. Nobody grievesthe […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #61

Breathing America Brown Dad flooded the house with English;  it swept through the open front and back doors  and trickled in through drafty windowsills.  He stored it in the cabinets and refrigerator  to pour out in the face of want. Sentences were broken: no English, no eat.   Brown Dad understood a human body, like […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #60

Regarding Cairns                           In the beak year                of bird,                      we observe              bird—             though some, fashioned                    by man, stone-birds                         not flying.                   So instead, I pray and gift                     such a peach-blossom                         morning to my brother,              together with this […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #59

The Best in the Midwest There’s a town in Indiana called Liminality. I’ve never been. Liminality is the name above the bank, the name crowning the post office. The school, the police station, the church. The diner, famous for its hash browns, The Best in the Midwest! Letters arrive in Liminality from elsewhere and disappear. They […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #58

The Penitent Kneels in Rubble What he couldn’t say: That he’d been swallowed whole and couldn’t see a way out. That faith is a useless weapon against falling sky. The weight of heaven, too great. That he could see himself fading, was almost invisible in the mirror of Room 214 of the Grantmoor Motor Lodge. […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #57

It Was Not Midnight, It Was Not Raining Let’s call this our sixth anniversary. Yes, we married last January but six years ago drank our first pints together—the two of us at Kelly’s swiveling on corner stools, talking Beckett and Bashō like we knew something. It was Halloween. We met a man named Elvis though […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #56

An Untouched Forest In our few years together, I never told you this— I used to sneak a blanket to the woods, apostrophe myself against an elm till dark. I learned to disappear in branches, quiet as the moss. Love, I never told you— I name every tree I touch. Still find myself curled and […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #55

Your Anxiety thin as a shadow, masters tripod- headstand-tripod- roll for third grade gym class by practicing for hours in the grass in the backyard, wearing a path there, and, when it rains, crushing the maroon carpet in the family room with the same motion. Triumphant, she decides to stick by your side forever. When […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #54

Sonnet for Fat Purple Figs After Sylvia Plath If the figs on this tree represent a life left unexplored, I’ll pluck dozens, dropping the fat purple ones in the folds of my shirt. I will sit in the shadow of the branches & let the juice rest on my tongue, drip down my neck before […]

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #53

Poetry by Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #52

False Jasmine

By Christine Butterworth-McDermott

 

Think honey./
Think suckle./
They say if you dream/
of such blooms, it spells/
good fortune in love/
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #51

To Drink

By Tomas Nieto

 

The raft of my two hands/
slide together, knuckle to knuckle,/
buckling. The cool water collects/
in the center. I lift this small sea…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #50

Ennui for Scenes Garnered While In Bed

By Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto

 

Are all of us birds enough?/
There is a glowing kindness in my eyes if you look well./
I don’t want to be that boy imprisoned by conscience…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #49

Wow! Signal Dredging Light

By Joel Peckham

 

When it comes, it finds me shin-deep in our creek as I bend my knees, lock elbows/and strain to dig down and in, and/lift the tall grass from the water, heavy…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #48

After Waking

By Karthik Sethuraman

 

Flame, hushed to embers, exhaled into a final/syllable of smoke. Can I call this a prayer? A wet/wick, sesame oil, matches under straw, and/when I lock the door to the house, I remind myself…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #47

Language

By Nadia Alexis

 

The ocean swallowed a father./My father’s father whole. His father ate/ too many hearts of chicken & women. He ate/his children. My father, one of them./By the time my mother & father walked…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #46

Nude Study from Life, Lee Krasner, 1938

By Lisa Beech Hartz

 

Crossing 8th Street in the rain Igor laughed, /
dropped your hand. I like being with an ugly woman. / Angle of the streetlight, silvering everything, even / his careless mouth. It makes me feel more handsome.
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #45

Where it Hunts

By Kelly Weber

 

On a day still half-winter, I hike a trail through the short grass prairie on the edge of town named for / a woman who willed that it be preserved. Meadowlarks whistle yellow holes in the air from the posts / rising out of the ground. Ripples circle outward from the mallards floating in the shallow pools…
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