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Poetry

Poetry Issue #44

It Makes You Wait for It

By John Leonard

 

I feel like I’m stuck in a rural Texas town
with no gas money to get myself home,
and if I kept walking until I found a new town,
it would probably be the same town…
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Poetry

POETRY ISSUE #43

Shoshana’s Mother

By Joshua Sassoon Orol

 

אמא של שושנה
How does a mother teach a son
about the body of a woman?
A teen in need of a shave
I pop open
the microwave…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #42

Mother Darling Visits the States

By Alexa Doran

 

It’s not that the sky here isn’t blue
but that something has to asphyxiate to turn that hue.

I was so sure New England would fit like a skin… Read more

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Poetry

Poetry Issue #41

Obituary for Gerald

By Arjun Parikh
 
 

Gerald went by Gerald even when he was young. As a boy he set out to read the entire encyclopedia. He was adamant about doing only one thing at a time. In his twenties he played Russian roulette on Sundays… 
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #40

The Apologetics of Leaving

By Naomie Jean-Pierre
 
 

a leaving 

begins in the 

calluses on my feet 

calcium, hardened on my teeth 

laughter ghosts 

a smile in disguise beneath my nose… 
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #39

Weathervane

By Kristin Macintyre
 
 

I am so far away I write you 

a postcard from the next room, 

say there is a whole 
 

grove of plum trees 

on the rooftop – neat little rows of stones 

fruit above the washroom… 
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #38

Drape the Mirrors.

By E. Kristin Anderson
 
 

Two months had passed –  

the bed was all made; 

the doctor on the phone 

made an art of simple speech. 

Back from the dead 

a tiny voice reached… 
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #37

THE YEARS COME A-TUMBLING

By Urvashi Bahuguna
 
 

It took long hours to fashion a set of wings 

out of cardboard and silver foil, to pour glue 
 

out of a blue bottle, paint with a flat brush 

to the very edge. My mother punched holes, 
 

slipped drawstrings borrowed from petticoats 

and tied them on my back… 
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #36

FORDING A RIVER ON HORSEBACK AFTER HEAVY SNOW-MELT

By Robert Rothman
 
 

You have to knee her forward, down the sand

embankment, shoes clattering like silver dollars

on the river rock, encouraging words mixed with

spurs, into the freezing wash, the surge…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #35

After the Antidepressants Stopped Working

By Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad
 
 

There is a phrase we use in Farsi

in despair or desperation:

joonam beh labam reseedeh, or

my life has reached my lips,

and how I wished it were true…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #34

The Small Book of Virtues

By Sandy Coomer
 
 

a bitch

in pain knows no better

than to bite the one

that lifts its broken body…
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Poetry

Hussain Ahmed

Ice Cream and Blood
 
 

Chromatography was our best chance,

to separate blood from

the ice cream. I see there’s little oil

in the world

to make this love go round…
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Poetry

Aileen Bassis

A Girl Who Was Born Without a Mother
 
 

She could be progeny from another

universe where metal coalesced

with blood and salt—she emerges

with a scattering of nails and rust,

chewing gum and baby hair…
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Poetry

Alexis Bates

Unsolicited Advice (About That Boy)
 
 

My roommate stops me from tossing

the bananas, already browning,

the rot makes them better

for the stomach to digest…
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Poetry

James Blevins

Helios
 
 

In the smoke of morning, she takes

off the sun’s clothes for me,

holds them up by two fingers,

before letting them fall upon

the earth…
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Poetry

Moushumi Chakrabarty

Illegal
 
 

Imagining a landscape is easy

What is not

Is grappling with its spirit and pull.

In the Piazza del Signoria…
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Poetry

Savannah Cooper

Fragments
 
 

Under the deepest, darkest sky,

I drive home. Only the stars

tacked across its bruise-blue

surface keep it from falling,

collapsing around me like a sheet…
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Poetry

Natalie Crick

Two Poems
 
 

The whisper

Wicks from her lips.

A soothing salve.

She bends, twists,

Feet touching the walls…
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Poetry

Jessica Lee

My mom found my condoms
 
 

I’m eight hundred miles away

and my family is painting over the red

walls of teenage bedroom/boudoir,

boxing up

the contents of my flower-knobbed…
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Poetry

D.S. Maolalai

A bowl of oranges
 
 

with you away

I sleep a lot

and not often alone.

my bedroom is a bowl of oranges…
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Poetry

Kristian O’Hare

Two Poems
 
 

Even the creeping myrtle

doesn’t stand a chance against

the lily-of-the-valley

as it storms the lawn, a cluster

of dark-green lanceolate leaves…
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Poetry

Milla Van Der Have

Snowdrift
 
 

It’s dark when she wakes

darker than she has gone before.

It’s not a blanket or a cage

but rather the stark dissent

of all that’s missing…
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Poetry

Rachel Walker

My Sister Posing in Front of the Arno
 
 

If it weren’t for the scrunchie

around your wrist and the teal

water bottle in the picture,

you could be Botticelli’s

Venus. Tawny hair swept…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #32

Chthonic

By Jonathan Louis Duckworth
 
 

How soothing to picture

my grandfather planted like a seed

in the crust

of the other continent

we call the older one…
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Poetry

Poetry Issue #31

Defense of Dysfunction

By Crystal J. Zanders
 
 

My brother and I used to fight over the remote.

We would spend hours after school

before Mama got home, arms locked in battle.

If you let go, you lost…
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