As old timey Westerns foretold, cowboys reclaimed the dust lands: black bandanas sewn with coyote claws, buzzard plume, King James Bible cutouts cursing the world to come. Next, satellites abandoned air & crashed subtle as heaven -destined skydivers shrugging ripcord disaster. This attracted bystanders: basement-dwelling cyberpunks later reduced to neon puddles. When you wandered the […]
Poetry 93
Kelli Stevens Kane: consumed
poured myself a glass of shame. I can’t taste it doesn’t mean it has no taste. all I’ve swallowed, swallows me. when I was made of water, water didn’t have a flavor either.
Luke Johnson: Gunshot, Campground
I once listened to the cold mosaic at St. Paul’s dome while my father whispered opposite. He spoke of blood and history. Folks tend to murmur the wild and holy places, to texture the roaring quiet in which comprehension is secondary to some sense of sanctity: this mumbled joy we’ve ground down— gunshot or whisper […]
Luke Johnson: The Difficulty of Bouquets
In my car in front I re-rubberbanded two bouquets to one with balance, impossible to know inside you were deciphering your escape, me, a catastrophe of cellophane at my feet, and you burst when you saw me, saw flowers, and I knew then at the top of the staircase. The worst part: this boring trope […]
Alyssa Jewell: Finding Home
after the Heidelberg Project Say you’ve got your ear pinned to the linoleum because your toes are blistered with gravel, you’re hot, and the fan is whispering sweet anythings into your brain. The cat’s toenails rattle the ground and soft echoes of a somewhere else pulse into your ear drum. This is not the first […]
Vicki Iorio: The Biography of Love
I love Bambi when a hunter shoots Bambi’s mother I hide under the seat until the movie ends My mother holds me whispers she’ll never leave I don’t know that love is my mother I only know her perfume her red lips her cigarettes are my home I am in love with Ricky Nelson’s white […]