—Woman on a TV commercial Sometimes, as I raced the bases after dinner, Mom’s pot roast and chocolate pie would join hands to wring my guts. Once a cramp seized me halfway across Green Lake, my anaconda-bowels straining to drag me down. Charlie-horsed sixty feet deep, I pulled back on my Scuba fin till […]
Poetry 93
Jonny Veach: Antoinette 187b
darling these days i’m jealous of nearly everyone the serial killer is a motherfucker because his trial is nationally syndicated i covet the photon because it knows nothing other than the speed of light tonight my only wish is to part my hair like a head of state i envy the fireflies flashing morse code […]
Gina Tomaine: Bastille Day, Philadelphia
I backed into you, eyes closed and reeling. When I opened up we were already far gone— rambling nothings about velociraptors and Moon River, and the way Humphrey Bogart kissed Ingrid Bergman. You sped your blue bike past our first kiss. Came back, hands on my waist, hands in my long dirty blonde hair, me […]
Patrick Swaney: Extraction
Mr. and Mrs. Dentist are not dentists. Mr. and Mrs. Dentist dig holes in their back yard. They feel better when they are digging, so they dig. Mr. and Mrs. Dentist have problems. They also have perfect teeth and smiles like cupcakes, so the world doesn’t take their problems seriously. The Dentists want to live […]
Adrian Silbernagel: Understatement
Our faces are screensavers. My favorite flavor is tobacco on an empty stomach; yours is bit-tongue blood. We’ve mastered the art of inaudible temper tantrums. We’ve learned and forgotten how to love that to which we’ve grown accustomed. Burnt leaves spill from my fingertips onto the porch you swept this morning while I slept off […]
Wendy Scott: December Sketchbook
I have tried to find for us a shape for all this grief . . . . the few ragged crows that could have been Van Gogh’s birds Richard Jackson 1 They bring the night, crows, gathering silently. Murders cross the sky, faster than rush hour, swarming above the stop, slide, of cars. Crows […]