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 […]
Poetry 68
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 […]
Michele Kotler: Like An Easy Mass Transit Transfer
bus me uptown fly me around subway me down mass transit me to see you seventy-five and alive I smile into the light being built from a train curving into this station the exit folks spill out I step into the car and as if that were a cue I am two and a half […]
Jennifer L. Knox: Ode to the New Girl at the Office
O new girl at the office! How many young girls I’ve watched come and go afore ye in their itty-bitty Charlie’s Angels t-shirts, the shit brown trim around the neck and sleeves like donkeys’ halos, and O! shiny tennis shoes with soles sprongy as bubble baths. How the body glitter settles in the creases of […]
Jennifer L. Knox: The Best Thanksgiving Ever
After the meal, Sandy decided we should spice up charades by slapping the loser’s butt with a ping-pong paddle. Whenever Ed got slapped, he farted because he was so nervous. The ladies won, slapped all the men’s butts, but then what to do? “Take off your clothes!” I told Sean, who didn’t seem like the […]
Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis: Tin Pan Alley
Clamourous 1914 West Twenty-eighth, between fifth and sixth. I mean the real spoon back beat of piano pounders simultaneously striking the air, steely in a flock of metal birds beating their wings out of time. Now the flower sellers line the street, mute with their loud mums and long-necked lillies, tuberose and tea flowers. When […]