deceptive in its transparency, A mountain stream I could take a quick tube down And find myself whipped over, drowning, laughing. Give me a whiskey in a dark booth, two shots in the hand across the table insisting I have more. I want more. Make the booth leather, let the leather be torn, […]
Poetry 86
Vievee Francis: Wolf
cause I was a bad boy, so my daddy tol me the story ‘bout the wolf and lil red rilin hood ~HowlinWolf 1 It’s licking your door knob You know it’s there (yesyoudo) Sound so subtle if not for the scent you might pretend it’s the rustle of needles over theporch boards you might pretend […]
Adam Falkner: Connor Everywhere But
after Jericho Brown Connor on the four train, sports page rolled into a drumstick. Connor stretched out shirtless on the front lawn, a football propped behind his head. Connor laughing against the red brick of a café, head thrown to the sky like a sail snapped by the song of a quick wind. Connor in […]
C.M. Clark: Ismene Upstaged
Ismene of the bottlebrush tree, how long can an eyebrow grow untweezed? What if it’s left to curl and punk-jut garden-random, scalp, eardrum, cornea, liberated as milkweed? How will you ever learn the proper shape or coax of comb to settle these tantrum hairs? At eleven, this is gnosis: the wafers of […]
Morgan Parker: Poem
I know it takes seven years for our cells to change so I started last Thursday the train was pregnant with stillness and groceries so do you know what I thought? I wondered and then I thought I would be sick with the sound of your feet against hardwood coming to sweep up twisted spine […]
Morgan Parker: Epistolary Poem for Reader, Brother, Grandmother, Men (Or, When I Say I Want To Spit You Up)
I’m thinking, what would happen if I started masturbating on this subway car? It’s late. An African man next to me is reading the president’s book. Drinks tonight with an older poet who told me that Winnie the Pooh is the same as Homer Simpson and he is correct. I have been leaving space on […]