for Sue, in Florence I had to laugh when the kids on the Ponte Vecchio overlooking the Arno pointed and yelled, pronounced in three languages RAT and you turned to me, insisting it must be an otter. Me a New York kid who’d perched on the wall in Astoria Park looking down at rocks edging […]
Issue 68
Carole Simmons: Oles A Fine Example
The late cinquecento Venetian bride displayed upon a ledge beside their bed this marriage goblet: emerald glass, enamel red and blue, the rim gold granules; gilt the fluted base, the portrait bride’s curls and bodice trim, whose arc two strands of pearls repeat—gems La Serenissima forbade loose women. The bride’s bouquet a certain lily, her […]
Carley Moore: Turning In
for Matt She says he spent a life contemplating white. I hear this about yellow too—the white in yellow is even more difficult. I like streets that cross into one another. This might be a way of making a mountain. I have only one stairway to climb down from. The map of Queens does not […]
Jeffrey Little: spurs
when the wind comes it’ll come wearing gene autry’s spurs & speak w/a distinctive twang a very deliberate lisp of associations the strategems of need it’ll enter into a dialogue w/what the ache inures what it beckons into was into beckons into ash when it comes it’ll come as a chimney sweep out of a […]
Ada Limón: Spanish Lessons
I can understand it if I try hard enough, All the twisted R’s and accents like birds in flight The tongue twirling in fisted knots tough As the pachuco on the corner trying to get right Calling out to the ladies in deep whistles and growls, “Hola baby,” and then as if he were wounded […]
Jeffrey Ethan Lee: her blues
—and the teaspoons you gave me are tadpoles running through my fingers in dishwater, oh not really— unless the traffic on Race St. is a multi-colored chain, or a pigeon flock is scattered cards winging their numbers away, or a car door screeling open in icy wind is a seagull crying over the lot— and […]