Painted Bride Quarterly

Poetry

Laura McCullough: Begin With a Bifid Tongue

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Have you ever had turducken? That’s turkey stuffed with pork stuffed with chicken, a kind of gourmet diglossia, or if you prefer, a glossolalia of protein. All boneless, of course, which is best for the actual eating. Let’s make some, and while we eat it, let’s share whatever words we know in Tamil, Tagalog, Urdu. […]

Jean C. Howard: Fruit Fly

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Fat, little BB of motion, of minute flight, weaving prayers above sugar, an open mouth of wine and lemon wedge. Dreaming lazily of summer, its orchards ripe and aching, abstractions of fruit at sun-cut angles. Here you dip toward watermelon, haystacked with straws of jicama, then swerve toward bleeding fig. My thoughts go out to […]

Meri Culp: Stalker

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Keep your steely-eyed offerings, your garden pretense, botanical bliss, your reedy wisp of asparagus, no longer green-speared, but gray-leaden. Hold in check your artichoke words, the petal pull of anger-dipped butter, core-covering the heart  of new spring, my palmed heart, still tender, still looking for unsullied celery, small boats of clean, green sea washing to […]