You can’t really I don’t think write it today the kind of poem Sappho wrote six hundred years before Christ where you surprise the world saying not an army is it on horseback or of foot soldiers or a fleet of sailing ships that on the black earth is the most beautiful thing but rather […]
Poetry 76
James Allen Hall: Portrait of my Mother as Rosemary Woodhouse
My mother dreams she’s adrift on the Adriatic Sea. Naked men and women lounge all around her. Blue waves slap against her thigh and stones fall from unspeakable cliffs. I am dropped into her, boulder after boulder of me until I am safely drowned inside her. In the morning, Manhattan never looked so beautiful. “I […]
Melissa Tuckey: Portrait of my Father
In black and white ink my father the rain coming down sideways umbrella overhead charcoal pissing the match as he tries to light the flame to cook our burgers while we huddle in a pop-up trailer bored with our luck A caricature of himself scotch-taped to the fridge for decades the man and his family […]
David Lehman: Poem in the Manner of Polonius
Neither a follower nor a leader be. Vote, but tell no one for whom you voted. Do not avoid jury duty. Avoid a fight, but if attacked, fight back with all your might, and don’t try to fuck a girl on your first date. Kiss her good night and call the next day. Memorize verse, […]
Roberto Gonzalez: The Mortician’s Bride Says I’m Yours
Mexico City The city of tremors and toxins can’t have enough parlors waiting patiently along the street like the bald-eyed scavengers who profit from the art of waste removal. How fortunate you are to be betrothed to the mortician’s protégé. On Thursday nights he drives up with the hearse, and while the dogs panic and […]
Amy Hosig: Morning Reading
Mornings I shake out the window shades and let in light. Tiny invisible dust particles moving through the air become visible, a living room galaxy, whirling in destructive orbit paths, then slowly settling. If they are light enough and not too near the wind path of a door, the tiny matter suspend and maybe rise […]