Selected Poems
Winter 2025
[ An ice pane on the creek ]
A Lifetime in Spy School
Amanda Tackles the Future
Autumn Moth
Bend in the Light Blues Villanelle
Blade
Discreet Blues Villanelle
Dives: The Remnants of Debbie
Doublemint Gum
Driving Through the Old Neighborhood
Entry 1 Postcard from Kensington Gardens
Eternity Blues as Villanelle
From the Book of Balance
From the Book of Flux
From the Book of Loss
How He Sees Me
Hurtle On
Immigrant song
immortality
Imperial
Incorrections
Land O’Jim
Lexical Stress
Marianne, the Octopus and History
Native Tongues
Nest
Obits
Rain on Start of Winter
Rayette’s Plunge into La Fontana di Trevi
Road Music With Trees in Spring: Quatrina
Roger Williams’ Key to the Language of America
Sustenance in His Countenance
The Alhambra Covenant
The Definition of Bravery
The Redaction
The Well
The Wisdom Factory
The World Without Words
Welcome the new year
Where I Live
Fall 2024
A Whale’s Tale
Adult Situations
Akira Kurosawa’s Dream Mills
Creature’s Soliloquy
Deception, 1946
Dream of the Wild Horses
Flickering Images
Frocked
From Rachel*
Ghost Crab Redux
Greta Garbo, a snapshot by Inge Feltrinelli, 1952.
Handkerchief
How I Remember It
I Lost it at the Movies
Inaudible
Infomercial
Just once I’d like to wear
King Kong Talks About His Childhood
Labor Day Morning, 1921
Late Saturday Night TV
letter from a porn actress to her viewer
Little Lies
Mare Nostrum, 1926
Moulin Rouge Marseillaise
Movie Lessons
Never Look Away
Ode to Barbara Steele
Panic
Papillon (1973)
PEnnsylvania 6–5000
Pierre Clémenti, movie star, 1942–1999
Portable House Co.
Questionable Behavior
Sad Girls
Scorsese / Lemmons / Mary Kerr
Self–Portrait as NOPE
Soundtrack to My Mother’s Life
Stan Brakhage, 1933–2003.
Sundays with A
That Riviera Touch
the Ballad of Narayama
The Cinema
The Crow
The Movies We Saw
The Princess Bride
The Seventh Seal
The Usual Suspect
The Vikings Starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis
Those nights were on fire
Tom’s Girlfriend Breaks Up With Him as They Watch
Toshiro Mifune, I Love You
Travis and Jane
War Movies
Watch the movie, he says
When Dawn Comes
Summer 2024
[February] 23
A bird flies home
completely clean
fall ye gads a day without missiles
For A.Y.
Goryenna
He who couldn’t care much less
I’d like to tell you…
In the morning, through my shut eyelashes
Kakhovka Dam Burst: June Landscape
Lightning Meets Water and Wind
no I wouldn’t care to discuss the message of war…
Stork
The Score for the Musical Finale
the sky burns
War Poems
where, she asks, are my irises
Spring 2024
1950 Ford
A Tangible Way
a wayside
Adam’s First Question
And Then You Find You Love
Being a Pond
Being Daniel Boone
Bijoux
bookish house
Bureaucracy & Boobs
Catherine Blake’s Lament
Common Sense for Girls in Remote Places
Convert
Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Between Marriages to Frieda Kahlo, 1939
Elegy
Emissary
empyrean
Force of Now
Genus Rates
Grasshopper
Heather
If Napoleon Had A Daughter
In a Big Truck
In the rain
Isn’t it?
Jerry Wu
Jury Duty
Larry the poet
Love is a Pronoun OR is it a Preposition
Made
Mythologies
Nostalgia
Old Friends’ Rendezvous
On Being Mud
Passing Angel Housekeeping
Queen Ankhesenamun
Skulking Around
Slow Motion Grief
Smell
Tens X-XXII
The Art of Waiting
The Iron Horse
The Viper Room
Three Fingers Sue
Transcend Old Mom
Two for Koller
Walking at dusk near Hook Mountain
Walking By The Place Where They Toss
You Cathedral
Winter 2024
1. The King, The Prince, The Poet
7. For Adelle, August 15,
A Cradle Made Of Gold
and our blood will melt iron
Antechamber
At the Red Pine Motel
Autumn Song
BEGINNING WITH LINES BY THE POET
Body Double
Cruise
Daddy-O
Drum
Fall and Fly
Flexible Mind
FLEXIBLE MIND (for Rob Lewis)
For a Scottish Minimalist at the Antonine Wall
for wadley
From Here to Gaza
from Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return
he shows me how I am
Herbs of the Slopes
I Miss
Instead
January 18
Man Fixing the Attic
Mud
New Morning, Cedar Mesa
Ode to an Old Sweatshirt
Poem 14
Poems for Bradner Gardens
Random Act
Sonetos De Cascadia
The Mourner
The Old Sweatshirt Speaks
The Switch
The Wife Admits All
This Life I’m Leaving
Travel Brochure
Two from the Sanskrit of Lady Vidya
Two haikus
Utopia of Attic
Waiting
War
Watchman
would a church
Fall 2023
1969
After Migrations
Clouds, Smoke, Alarm away from Gaza
Crisis Kit
Do Nothing
During a Time of War
Early Easter Morning
Eastward
Echoes
El casco roído y verdoso
Honeybee
Improvisation 1
In the Still of the Night
Jealousy, My Attempt
Keyless
Making the Scene
Midwestern Erotic
Neal Street
Ouroboros
Poet
Prayer
Property Line
Sarah, waiting
Shore Road
Spare Parts
Thanks
The Ladies of Dotage Drive
The Last Kiss
The old boat
The Tree that Said Why
This is not a poem
Triangle Dreams
Walking with a Voice
Wingless
winter XXXXVI
winter XXXXVII
winter XXXXVIII
Wishful
Work
Yolk Yellow
You Came into My Dream
Summer 2023
A Bouquet of Haiku for A.Z.
A Diego Rivera on Valencia Street
A Fading Band
A Herd of Poets
A Place to Call Home
After/Math
An Orphan in the City of Paradise
Balloon
Beach Walk
Before you were the red truck
California Story
Excerpt from a Letter to My Mother
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Juan-les-Pins, France. November, 1926
Folklore 480
Hatred Strikes Them Incessantly
In a Moment
Inhabiting the Sound Gaps
Insta Surfing
Invisible Man Signs Up For Tinder
Love // Kill
Love is Strange
Lunar Epigraphs
One Too Many Poets One Too Many Poetry Readings
Open Source
Optical Illusion
Plaques You Won’t Find on the Shore of the Penobscot River in Bucksport
Rough Translation
Spring Morning
Summer Morning Sunset District
Techie Blues
The Great Contender
The Night Kitchen
The Role of Great Art
The Singing Nest
The Trouble
To Catch a Leaf
Underbelly
We are inVogue
You vow not to steal
Zelda Fitzgerald: New York, NY. April, 1922
Spring 2023
Abandoned Draft #1: Dismissal
Abandoned Draft #3: A Curious Feeling
After Heartbreak
Best Practices
Buffalo Stew
Buried in the City That Care Forgot
Christmas at The Cowboy Buddha Hotel
Coda to A Book of Dreams
Cowboy Joe
Dear Robert, I
Don’t be a Guberif
For Robert, His Caprices #95
from dowsing axis preverbs for Robert Kelly
Halloween Mask
It Seems
Jesus and The Jumper Cables
Jung’s Magic Book of Symbols
Life as It Was
Linger Long
Off the Danger List
Offloading
Old Marrieds
On the New Nature
Our Progress is Plastic and Cement
Questions for All Your Answers
Robert Kelly Poem
Sand Verbena Near Ojito Wilderness
Seeksorrow
Sharp Teeth, Sharper Tongue
The Leviathan
The Scrimshaw Artist
The Secret Lover
The Show
The Tracks
They Say
To Dream Infinity
To The River
Tools on D Street.
Unslumbering Bear
Waiting for the Plane
Water Water Everywhere
Winter 2023
After / Math
Aftermaths of Autopsy
Alexander Liberman, editorial director of Condé Nast & Artist, 1912-1999
Corporal Punishment
Daily Constitutional
Dear Dick, Professor Eberhart
December
Disease is the Best Cure
Do Not Touch My Clothes
Double Agent
Elda Gentile aka Elda Stiletto, 1949-2018
Elision
Entranced
Fable of Pursuit
Foot Binding Cloth Strip
for K.G.
Goodbye My Generation
Hollywood Blvd. for Dean Stockwell
Hope Abandoned
I Watch the Cellists
I. Sestina: Café Spitz, 1964
If God Were Human
II. Love in a Coffee Cup
In my Dreams
Lifelines
Lost Catalpa
Medleys for Crandall
Moonset
On A Distant Street
Poem After Yonghong Gu
Preparations
Result
Salt Lick
Something In Trees
The Pain of Now
This Force Sovereign in its Gnosis
Void’s Oratorio
World Anti-Slavery Convention Fallout: America 1840
World Anti-Slavery Convention. London 1840
Xena @ 7:23 p.m.
Fall 2022
A Clear Communion
A Road Once Taken
A Statue of Someone’s Father or Son
a walk in winter a walk in winter
Advice to the Unborn
After Thought
Baudelaire
Bioluminescent Creatures
Blue Haze
Brighton-Labor Day 2015
Chicago Winter 2018
Cloud Pavilion
Cultural Differences
Full Circle
Had Ophelia known
I was in love and . . . . . . .
in memoriam roy fisher
In the Midst of Silence
Looking For Eugene
Memory, Sadness Said
Monsters
My Ideal Reading Experience
My Vermont
No One
Nocturne
Old as the Hills
On Why She Just Won’t Do
One Nite Only: Free Beer & Chicken
Oxford Odyssey
Refugees
So Rare
Speech Like Spinning on a Sunny Afternoon
Spinning Out
Sure, I’ve Seen God
The Dance
The Leveling
The Lovers
The Poet-Laureate of Sussex County
The Sky And All Of Its Terror
Today
Trapped
Walking to Another Life
Washed Rind
Without
Summer 2022
“I have so Little time to grieve” — Anne Waldman
3 pages from “The Speak Angel Series”
A Stillness in Your Future
Against the Grain
All Saints’ Day
Becoming A Clipper
brain fog
caregivers log 7.27.19
Carnival
CIS
East Village Tales
Empty Swivel
Everything Must Go
Exterminator’s Song
Eye Terrain
Fille de Rhizome
Friendly Fire
Fuck You/A Magazine of the Arts
Gertrude Pain
Hermit
Hymn to the Lower East Side
Hyperion Takes a Hit
I sleep on the pull out couch bed to be closer to her at night
Immigrant
Insolent Kindness
Joe Brainard Drawing for Banana
Like Planets
My Fingerprints Left on a Book
My Ukranian Grandmother
Observatory Lights
Odes to the Unlikely
On The Wild Strawberry
Oranges and Reds
Paradise Answering Service
Pi-Day
Poem
Poem
Primavera
Red Boots on Avenue A
Sail, Baby
Scrambling for a Foothold on the Cliff of Time
Sharon Tate, movie star, 1943 —
Tattered Bodhisattva: “ Death ! Truth ! Meaning of Life ! / Love ! Romanticism ! Loss ! Reality ! Consciousness ! ”
Ted Berrigan, poet, 1934-1983
The Crying God
The Fourth Wall
The Ostrich Colony
The Peace Enigma of Stillness
The Peace Eye Vision, January 1962
The Poem Writes Itself
The Story of Peace Eye
The Wife of Lot
Toaster on a tightrope
Welcome to the Putin Archipelago
What Time is it Where You Live ?
Whiffenpoofery
Who Is Buried in Grant’s Tomb?
Winning Is Everything !
Spring 2022
A Bit of Both
A Matter of Words
Amaranth the Underlying Flower
April Morning
BIRTH • DAY
Covering Stan Getz
Cubicle Soliloquy
Flower Moon
Following Easter, Fog and Light
Free Heroin
Girl, Calendar 1979
Graig Sack Co
Grandmother Pulls the Dryman’s Arm
In Another Room
It Is Solved By Walking
Kabul Sunset Version II
Knots
Late Summer, Barnegat Light
Li
Message from Janis Joplin’s Northern Lights
Mysterium Interruptus
Portrait of Your Parents
Purpose of Religion
Requiescat in Pace
Revolutions are not about trifles
Rope Swing
Self Portrait with Quilt and Synesthesia
Sending Light
Shapeshifter
Simple Life
Strange Forms with Fancy
Sunday Cave
The Call
The First Man You Loved
The Sand — Trophies of San Felipe
The Shroud of Hubris
The Thread
These Days are Fleeting
Tumblehome
When I Realized I Couldn’t Make More
Wonderful News, Darling
Yellow Rain Slicker
Your Life Will Never Be the Same After Trying These Unusual Hacks
Winter 2022
“Cut off his head and give back the hatchet”
500 Kilometers
Between Tortoises and Stars
Blind Poem without a Mouth
Buried Alive
Cities of Water
Conditional
Contradictions
Corn Flowers in the Clouds
Death’s Continuous Stalking
Destiny of an Insect
Don’t Be Scared, It’s Nothing, It’s Just America
Fear
First Rain
Illnesses
Improving the Race
Lament of the Young Soldier Jean-Pierre Lepetit in the Mountains of Algeria
Message of Love and Reparation for Ernesto Cardenal in your Galaxy
Monarchs
muskrat notebook
Paulina Pedroso
Philosophy of the Optimist
Portal
Reflections of a Minister of State
Requiem
Solstice
Something?
Sports Chronicle
Surrealism Alfresco
the Gates of the City
The House of Drunks
The Spirits of Water Carry Me Off
The Stranger
The Taste of the Waters
To the Angelus
Trust
When I see Them Go By
When the Waters of the East Sing in My Dreams
Who?
Why Nobody is Joane Florvil
Writings
Yearning
Fall 2021
1923
A Photo with You
A Poem of the Middle-Aged
Afterglow
An Apology for Existence
Asking, in the Mountains: Fire
Beijing is a distant place
Belgrade’s Pain
Box
Daddy Waits
Debating about Love with a Glass of Wine
Empire’s Pasture
experience, images, and the latest news
First Order of Things
Glimpses of Drepung Monastery
head down and walk
Hidden
humanity
Insomnia
Kingfisher
land of the fairies
Leopard
Letter from Jiangnan
Life
Looking for Vivian
Loud
Middle-age
Miracle
Moments
mountain top
My Ancestors
Night Story
Noon
Over distance
Overnight on the River Fu
Paper People
Positive and Negative Horse
Puddle
relationship
Roasting Potatoes
September Book
Situation
Spider King
Stutter
Teleportation
That’s Just It
That’s Me in That Vine Chair
The Chalk Circle
the moment i’m in culture
The Night Is Upon Us
The Red Horse from My Destiny
The Sunken Fissure
The Yaluzangbu Big Bend
theatre with no roof
Thoughts from Lhasa’s Yutuo Street
Three Horses Drink Water at Riverbank
Three Witches
Tibetan Antelope
Tongue
Tool
True Dark
Tune for a Peaceful Night
Summer 2021
19 June Berkeley
A Clear Communion
A Poem Walks into a Bar
A Soliloquy
A Toilet on a European Intercity Express
after a poem by Tao K’ai
After All
After Bruegel
aug /6 /1945, hiroshima
Channels
Circus
Coyote, Moving
Craft
Dalliance with a Dervish
Dead End
Drinks with John Ashbery
Drunken Tanka
End of the Road
Enward
far away null
Fossils
From That Way The Trains Came
Going Home
Head Full of Feathers
Helpless
Holding Your Flesh
Human Love
I’d Like to Stay
if moral development
Intensive Care
Kent Johnson: How to Write an Avant-Garde Poem
Larry of the Winter Song
Les Fleurs de Nuit
Marooned
MRI
No Limit
No Thru Traffic
O Pin Yin Sonnet (28)
Resting Face
Rose In A Blue Vase
She Dresses
Silver Sunset
Some Summer Night, Ten Years from Now
Stages
Tainted Love
The Guy That Drives Me Here
The Lovers
The Philosopher (3)
The Sex Life Of A Writer
Unfinished
Wanderers Nightsong
War Piece
Spring 2021
10
11
12
19 sparrows
7
9
After
Amazing America
Ark
Beard
Blivet
Diary in self isolation
earthborne
Edges
El Faro
Far Views of Kabutoyama
Fin
Fool Proof
Four Pieces of Unknown Origin
Green Man
Hampstead
If at All
In The Capital City
Ingrained
Karma Song
L’Underground C’est Moi
Legend
Maggie Valley
Milan
Minding the Cave
Mist and Dew
mute witnessses
Nursing Home
Old Kyoto Notes
On Spec
Oracle Now Poem — Dom Sylvester’s Fruit Machines
Raggedy Jack
Scree
Shores of longing
Sirhowy Valley
Some Chill
Stained Glass
Stonewall
The Flood Defences
The Good You Say
The great dying
The Hoax
The Pear Tree
The Real Thing
The Wall Talks
There’s dancing
tiger stripes
Trains
Valuable Literary Works Lost — Reward Offered
Wellfleet from Properties
With Blake, in London
yearling moose
Winter 2021
“Kevin, don’t put your hand . . .”
“So then he says to me . . .”
“The tuatara lizard . . .”
A 3D film, but a flat-screen viewer
A Letter from Zürau
A Play for A Synthesizer
A Statue of Socrates
A Taste for the Seaside
A Tree
A woman to a woman is a country
About Blue : Velestovo
Across the Bering Strait
All will end soon
Ash-berries and acid leaves
Bolshoy Stone Bridge
Brooklyn
City, that does not exist anymore
Converted into linear meters
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Does not the risen yeast swell on the generosity
Don’t Ask for Directions
Eight Lines
Epidemic of minuses
First Photo of a Black Hole
Fortunate one
from “Cognitive Capitalism”
from Oil
Gentle Rose
Hookers and Johns
I have never experienced gender discrimination
I was a fun-loving character
I’ll be a lighthouse keeper
I’ll reply to the Outer Sea . . .
If you’re good-looking — let’s hook up together!
Is it because there is no stopping moments
Italy, 24 August 2016
Janiculum
Jerusalem
let’s reschedule the hypnosis session for tuesday
M.P.
Memory
Night froze on guard, clenched its little fist
Not to Fear Anything
Of all of them
ohio’s flags
Optics
Poetry
Processes
Quiet Games
Return to Babylon
Route 2
Short Bio
Sideways
Sleepless Conversation (Incantation)
Soleil Rouge. Anarchie
Somewhere
Tenderness consists from bits of patience
The Bears
The Informant
The last employee
the nice thing to do
The Pied Piper
The Prose of Life
The wind — sudden, sodden — late winter’s cursive
This incredible day was covered by rain
To Berlin Jewish museum
Today
trees are growing
victory day
War and Pushkin
where’d that butt get to
Fall 2020
A Poem for Dr. Blossom
A Poem to Be Read Slowly and Quietly
A Super Star at home 1969 according to Diane Arbus
After Season 8, Episode 3, Game of Thrones
Andy Warhol’s Three Sisters
Apology for Bad Dreams: St Croix 1953
Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes
At Hot Water Beach
Because
Burial song, Fish’s Eddy
By a Lake, Perhaps
California Suite
Caviar for the Generals
Ceasefire
Chanson Pour Jean-Louis
Dawn
Dialectic
Elopement
Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Goodbye.
If You Visit The Old Burying Ground
Living With Apostrophe
Making Tea
Narcan
Nemesis
Not Knowing
Opus Vitae
Or Perhaps a soul
Our friend the thunder
Rationale for a Kiss
Safecracking
Saturated Landscape
The Children of Narcissists Are Likely to Attract Narcissists Into Their Lives as Adults
The Ecstasies of Sense
The Empty House
The First Message
The Hammer Stone
The Human Condition
The Space
The Unease
Then Knowledge is the Only Life
Thistle
To Mo Cohen
To The Next Cold Case Killer
Two Haiku Sequences: An Akita Summer
Where would my story end?
Who saw it coming?
With Death in the Via Canale
Summer 2020
A Memory of Michael McClure
A Song for New York
An ailing wind
At Last You’re Here
caithness
calfia’s daughter
coltrane
Covid-19 and the Homeless
Days When I Imagine the Future is the Past
Farewell Mountain
Farewell to Hamburg
Forest
Four poems for Stuart Ross’ sixtieth birthday
from the salon of cultures
I’m shopping “love in the hunting season”
Is it True
Lockdown Borders
My Sister Died Alone
New World Order
Owl
Poem for Tucker Carlson’s Face
Salvadoran Woman Killed on Fillmore Street
SANDINISTA REVOLUTION
Seamus Heaney Reading at Colby College
Silent Orders
Skylight
Tachfyn’s Cats
the book of smaller
The Drunken Girl
The Emperor of Terracotta Roofs Confronts the Jester
The Immigrant
The lay of the land
The Thing
The Thorn and the Wash Basin
To the Linear
Twin
Two Haiku
war visions
Spring 2020
2 Doves
American Sonnet: after Franklin’s Story Telling Workshop
amores perros
Atropos
Beautiful Brunette
Diamond
Dispersal
Dissed
Dusk
Early or Late in the Furnace of This Century . . .
Factory Time
Fragment of Love
Funk Lessons for Life
Going to Heathcote Williams’s Funeral in Oxford
great grandma hannah’s victory garden
Heading East
Herd
Holiday Greetings 2019
Holy Garlic
Houston, We Have a Problem
How to Extract a Confession
I Want to be a Dead Poet
Latin
Lines Against This Realpolitik EnterPrize Nillennium Zeitgeist
Mephisto Fandango
October Window
Ode to Jeanne Choquette
On the (L)Edge
Poem
Poem
Pure Products
Refuge
Rhine Swim
Salut Papá, a Moment to Talk about some Reveries
Scoping a Wild Pig
Second Coming of a G-string
Shadows in the Garden
Sixteen Inches in Bismarck, North Dakota
Storm
The Drinker
The Language of Cephalopod
The Man That Brought a Singing Fat Lady and a Violin to a Gunfight
These Trinkets
Thinking
Two-story Bldg. on Vernon
Vespers
Watch Out, Quite Frankly
West Village at 4 A.M.
Winter 2020
A Spalting, though
After the Action Movie
All Possible Worlds
Apocalypse
California
Centering Prayer
Clear Creek Soliloquy
Dancing on a Wing of Breath
Dear David
Distance Learning
Dizzy
Early Morning, Front Porch
Foreign Fillings
Genitals — A Note to my wife
God Will See
Hands and Feet
How the Bat Gets In
Hymn to Glyphs
I have a friend, a poet
i thought to cook
In trying to negotiate
Indulgence
Liz
memory
Moonlight
Not the Thing Itself but the Thing
Now and then sonnet
Oh Joey I’m Not Angry Any More
Olson & Kerouac
On Pine Avenue
Paradise, Evacuation Lifted
Passage to Clearwater
Perch
Proem to “Olson & Kerouac”
Pueblo Dance
Reading in Bed
Rough and Smooth
St. Peter’s Picnic Circa 1983
The Jidimajia Arcane
The Name of Our Home
The Orchard Diary
The Whistle
Tuba
W.B.Y.
Weather Report
What We Must Do
Whiskered Intelligence
Widow at Stonehenge
You are They
Fall 2019
A Delight and a Lament
A Late Night Mouse
A Scrap of Paper
A walk in the woods
All This October.
Ben
Benny’s Home Stores Closing
Body by the Side of the Road
Bon Appetit!
Burn
Cat on the Wing
Christina’s World
Clone
Cold Begins
Coming Home from the Far Field
Cove St. Trivia
Dancing with Bach
Duck and Cover
Dwelling
Easter Dinner
End of Summer
End Times
Entanglement
Family Reunion with Browntail Moth Caterpillars
Fedora
Fit as a Fiddle
Galileo’s Middle Finger in the Museo Galileo, Florence
Glukopikron; Sweet-Bitter
Granada
Home
III
In Dream the Human Heart Breaks Open
In One Scenario
In the Veterans’ Home
In the Woods
Lavabo
Maine Stone
Making a Meal of Receding Footsteps
Making Nothing: So Much Depends
Markings; Double-stitching
Meditation on the Guitar’s Wood
Mendelssohn’s Bicycle
Metaphysics in the Time of Trump
Middle Ground at Katahdin
Moose in April
Mrs. C. and the Social Worker
My Father in Texas
My Father’s Seed
Next Spring, Or, If February Wouldn’t Pass,
Night Comes On
No Service
Nude Piano
Outward Bound
Properties of Fracture
Red Apologia
Rockland Lady: A Love Rap
Scrap Memories
Seasonal
Self-Portrait: Connemara
Soul Song
Spoiler Alert
Squander
Sunflower Apostasy*
The Deluge
The Little Birds Keep Singing
The Regret of the Poet after sending Work to a Magazine
The River
Three Postcards from a Walk Through the South of England
Time
Tonic 3 (Daphne)
Tonic 4 (Thoreau)
Underground Railroad
Vena Cava
Yes, We Have the Tricycle
Summer 2019
(Shades in Paradise)
A Cheer
A view. Of this orderly desert
A Woman on the Right
A Woman’s Jataka
An Attempt to Explain
And what remains from love
and when among the slightly broken turns
Assizi
At an Icy Lake in Madison
Beach in Orbit
Butterfly
Cats
dear darkness
Depiction of Achilles at Patroclus’s Bonfire
Don’t return: the KGB is back
Elegy for the Local Poet
Every city has its own smell.
Farewell to youth, my very own Falstaff
Father’s Day
hedgehogs and toads
Horror Eroticus (Carnal Love Does Not Prefigure Bliss)
humus births the sour air of respiration
I do not know how it happened
in a bee’s mind exists
In the Right-of-Way
In the vegetal life of a poet
Kulikovo Field
Lamed
Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Literature
lightening never leaves
Lions
living in a serendipity
Loser
Minus Ship
My age still years away from patriarchal
Narcissus Married Echo
no cue in chalk
Oh! In these elegies there are many strange beetles
Old Photographs
On joy — a bridge falling asleep
Pigeon Post
Resh
Risk
Sad Foresight
Saturday and Sunday burn like stars
Selected poems from Written Between 1975 and 1989
Silence
Sorrow and Joy
Spent by the sun
Take grey
Thank You in Several Languages
That Play
The end of the world
The last songs are gathering
the mirror
The top
The Women’s Locker Room at “Planet Fitness”
There is no station here, the old man said.
Touch these limits
View of New York from the Night Sky
Vitebsk, 1914
We Come from A Country
When I become an American
You don’t believe?
Spring 2019
And My Dog
Art Bell
Asparagus
Body Lies
Carry On
Catching Bees
Coleridge Was a Libra Too
Collector
Contemplating the K-T (Mass Extinction #5) new poem?
Dawn Poem
each stroke each breth nu beginning
Excerpt from Catalogue d’oiseaux
Fireflies
from The Loom
Gone South
is ths a dreem he askd me
It’s a Long Way To Go To Paint a Chicken (A Pastoral Poem)
Lecture on Nothing
Menses on an Eiderdown
Modus operandi
My friend is beaten in the room next door
n th goldn lite ths morning
nostos and not
Oiseau Triste
Old House
our dishes dsapeerd aftr we ate
Over from the Start
Pea Soup
Pillows, Bubbles, Poodle
Primitive
Scar
Shelter
Sketch of a poem ending with lines by Robert Duncan
Sketch of an unwritten poem on the life & times of the poet
Song for Pia
Song for the Song of the Cedar Waxwings
Song of the Wagons
sourcing
Spider and the Sun
The American Poet Ezra Pound Recommends Peanut-Butter to His Italian Friends
The Fall of Icarus
the lopsided nature of this hut
Undressed
Valleys of Cape Breton
where are you?
wing words
Winter 2019
“Catch a Wolf”
A Conversation // Speaking Through Photos
a fool did linger
a snowball that picks
a young star
Acque di Venezia
At the Foot of the Valley
Birds of Greece
Blues for a Lady in Boston
Cambodian Kids Babysitting
Cambodian War Veteran
Caught Up in Absolute Gravitation
Cedar Cigar Box
December Sunday I
December Sunday II
Empire
Fin-de-Siècle America
haiku etc.
Interview in the Hinterland
Inventory of Nests
It is a bitch no break
It is the blue of the sky
January Sunday
Japanese Lesson
Letter From China
Locked in the Nazi Dollhouse of Death
Maha Ghosandanda
Mortality
Playing the Tro-u
Poem (So, in a matter of months)
Scared
The Bar at Saturday Zoo
The Cormorant
Theory of Continents
There are no options
Things You Can Live Without
Thrift Shop Blues
to arrive late (a dilemma)
Tracks everywhere
Transient
Warning
Why Be Blue?
Wilderness
Fall 2018
A new
A Town Without
An Oblate Sphere
Ancient Options
at a Hannaford parking lot in Portland, Maine
Ballad of Another American Boy
Brueghel’s Idiots
Café Morandi
Change in the Weather
Clinton Street
Diamonds and Rust
Eurydice in the Park
fixing the past
From Childhood
Getting my Religion at the Gray Dump
Hard Candy
Have you heard about
Heads
How It Goes
I Swear It’s the Same Crow
Inherit
Intimacy
Inventing God
it became difficult to tell
Lazarus
Leaving Mount Vernon
Letter to M.
Max
Metamorphosis
Mr. K
My Mother and I
Once I lived in the early spring
Pariah
Passing
Patience
Pruning Time
Rain is
Reunion
Riding Lesson
Splicing a Line
The Poet Needs a Puppy
usurpation
Waiting
What We Do Not See
Window and World
Woodchuck
Summer 2018
01:45
2007
A consolation for those
A Depiction of a Spurned Lover
A Summer Day
An Old Classmate
berry picking
Burning Smell
Bus Stop
Calming the Herd
contact
Contemporary
daybreak
Decision
Definition
Doomsday
Fire Mother
Fragile Things
Friend
Garage
Girl in a fish-workers’ hostel
Glade
hekla
Honey
human science
I climb down to the earth
Idiot
Imbalance
Kindness
Migration
MRI
My House
Nature Poem
New Year’s Eve
Ode to the Moon
On the Tray
Oral Exam in Active Civic Engagement
Passé 3: Romantic Poem about Capitalists of the Past
Philosophy of Existence
picture of a living room
PoemDaddy
Poetry
Poetry
Poetry Service Inc.
Queer mourners
Reflections on the Law of Causation
Reykjavik
Rhapsody
Serenity
Study
Tabula Rasa
The Colors in my Dollhouse
The Deep
The love of women
The Names
the silence
the story of me
The Wolves in South Iceland
Third November Poem
Tools
Turning Points
Undirdjúpin
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
Victory
Wind Season
Woman
Spring 2018
A Gale-Force Wind
A Light Never Extinguished
A Little Action
Abacus
After a Storm on Oliver Bay
ampersanding
An Innocent Victim of Blind Justice
Art According to Curly
Arts Briefly
Bonding
Brothel
Dead
Enigma
Epilog
For the Hiker Lost in Acadia
Here We Are, Where Are We?
High Flier
Life Goes On
Losing It
Manning the Turnstile on River Styx
Moonlight on Haws
rain coming down
Reluctance Before Spring
Separate
Stone Pit
Tapas
The Barred Owl
The Power
What Is Chosen in Dreams
What the End Was Like
when one lay sleepless
Winter 2018
A Dozen Cuban Tortas
A Good Day
American
Anonymity
Autobiographies 3
Autobiography 1
Beginning The Family
Closing Shift at the Liquor Store
Culture
Dad
Dawn on Mount Sinai
Denny’s on the Corner of Garnett & Mission Blvd.
Examination of Conscience
First Date
For Jack Collom
Forgetting you is like a lion
In Praise and Memory of Joanne Kyger
Inventory
Jazzman
Jon at Eighteen
Letter to One’s Elders
Maybe I Was Meant To Be Humbled
mnemonic
Morning Shift at the Liquor Store
My Muse
Nothing Happened
Portrait of an Ordinary God
Rats
Recycling
Sadness on Grabhord Rd.
Selective Vision
Slip away
Species-ism
Strangers at a party
Susan’s Holy Mountain
The Best Advice
The Stray Dog
The View from Mt. Forgotten
Timor Mortis Conturbat Me
To My Track Driver, on Trial
Two Darlings
Two Old Sisters
Useless Things
Week on Hatteras
Welcome Homesick
Your Windmills Can Set Down Their Fireworks
Fall 2017
A Catholic Girlhood in Queens
A Small Blessing
Abortion
Assemblage
Blacksnow
Bop Juice
Cave
Cut Flowers
Dear Earth
East Coast Girl
Envy — An Elegy
Eternal Life
Far Breton
Gravity
I Was Loth to Lead Her
In Some Café on the Upper West Side
Inconvenient Ice
Instruction for Wanderers
Just
Meet the New Boss
Milltown Legacy
My Father
New Year’s Eve
No Man is an Island . . .
North of November
Old Composer
Old Orchard Beach, 1962
Poem (“popular fear . . . ”)
Rain Dancer
Saturday, in the Park
Spectral Lines
Style Status
The Bill of Rights
The God Who Loves You
The March
Titania’s Tool
What Was Found There
Who Hasn’t
Yahrzeit
Summer 2017
A Course in Miracles
by Patricia Ace My cousin is taking a course in miracles. She rises at five to the cries of the birds, the tropical light bleaching the room
A Scottish Suite
by James McGonigal Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888 –1963): A Scottish Suite Spanish with Glasgow Scots God the Faither hauds the keys
A Shepherd’s Voice
by Anna Crowe A Shepherd’s Voice after 2 pictographic clay tablets from Tell Brak, Syria, c. 4000 BCE The river the clay was
Alasdair
by Angus Peter Campbell ( Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul ) Alasdair English Version Some things were public. How carefully you thatched,
An Old Story
by Gerry Cambridge After a long absence my uncle arrived one night across the sea from Ireland. Some terrible thing had happened. Frost had
At Hallan Cemetery
by Angus Peter Campbell ( Aonghas Phàdraig Caimbeul ) At Hallan Cemetery English Version I call by to see my mother and father and they
Bowers Knowe
by Valerie Gillies Bowers Knowe, we’ll never know now. In the north side of a natural mound a group of bronze age cists are found close together.
Common Rush
by Anna Crowe Common Rush for Swithun The flowers, by August, brownish withered knots; but something about the way they sprout —
Dandy
by Gerry Cambridge Dandy for my father and grandfather As he got older he grew increasingly more flamboyant in dress, out of a youth of
Dverg Mal
Simon W. Hall Dverg Mal Orcadian, Scots of Orkney ‘The echo comes from the hammars, or cliffs, on the side of the hill. Dr Marwick decided
Esso
by Jane McKie I dash from the pump: unseasonable hail has begun to javelin on the forecourt, perfume of petrol turned to freezing junk. Not far,
Faking It
by Jim Carruth Faking It (Odontochile spinifera, Barrande 1846, trilobite, Eifelian Devonian, Morocco) “Faking
Fire Watch
by Diana Hendry One year, dressed in his suit, father marched me across the road to the sandhills. All week they’d been building a bonfire there.
Girvan
by Rachel McCrum Girvan Whit’s yer hurry ? That great big sea turtle of Ailsa Craig waiting to finally lumber up evill scattering barnacles and
Glass Bangle
by Valerie Gillies We discover by chance how time can flow — in the broken glass bangle lost by a tribesgirl within the ramparts of the fort
Glenkiln
by Tom Pow One deer, then another, flushed out by my presence, before I can even spot what they were doing before me, cross half a field in four
Greater and Lesser Winter
by Henry Bell That full ripe Glasgow sun is warming up the courgettes and smashed TVs in my Back Court The sky is black to my left bright blue to
Hedgehog Girl
by Vicki Feaver I was born bristling with prickles. My mother shaved me with a razor. When my prickles grew back: longer, thicker, sharper, she
Immersion
by Anne Frater Immersion English Version If it had come in a downpour we would have noticed; we would have prepared: oilskin trousers and a
In a Green Wood
by Alan Gillis Under cover of the sycamore wood anemone blooms. The sycamore’s seeds, wee samaras, twizzle–twirl through the air. You trace
In Sutherland
by Ian McDonough The North Westerly is a martyr shrieking, broken on the wheel. Years are tentacles of giant squid grasping all we hold so dear
Iris
by Jane McKie When I get to the hot country I fling my sunhat down, letting my forehead bake to the gold of gooseberry piecrust. My arms will
Midas
by Miriam Gamble Later he will dress for dinner, though for now he is embarrassed that the only thing he has to offer is the Lucozade we brought,
Mornings
by Iyad Hayatleh Mornings English Version Thousands of splendid mornings and kisses I send to those who have no mornings To my mum whose
Moth and Mother
by Niall Campbell The night he cried himself into our bed, I couldn’t find the clear road back to sleep so went for water — filling the glass
Nice Has Become a Suburb of Edinburgh
by Ron Butlin I was having a last drink with a friend at the very moment a truck was being driven down a faraway hillside. I left the bar to find
North Highland Village
by Ian McDonough We’re born to see round corners, but struggle sometimes with panoramic vistas. Broken decorations from last Xmas hang from
On the latest discovery of an exoplanet.
by Pippa Goldschmidt Stutter–dots of light break up the sky, a bright Morse code that we love to crack. But even after we receive the
Oyster
by Michael Pedersen Bums to seats down at the table like a book with a fresh new ending — in every direction universes beyond this this room
Poor Peedie Gaelic
by Simon W. Hall Poor Peedie Gaelic Orcadian, Scots of Orkney Poor peedie Gaelic. Peedie tottie grottie buckie. Atlantic o pressure bearan
Prayer
by Ron Butlin When I reach the centre of the earth let there be someone with me. Each of us must bear the world’s weight, but not alone. So
Prosbaig
by Anne Frater Telescope English Version It was one thing at Trafalgar for Nelson, deliberately to raise the
Ratman
by Jim Carruth This was the nickname for him that stuck though the rat survived barely a few months after he trapped it in a sack at the harvest,
Return
by Iyad Hayatleh Return English Version It’s four am my heart sneaks towards alleys of Damascus like a Sufi deer in love with a white dove
Return of the Erne
by Yvonne Gray You are ancient bones drawn into the light from a stone–lined tomb. You are golden shafts that beam from the eyrie above the
sky
by Liz Niven lift Galloway Scots twa wrens are thrang, howkin oot moss fae ma gairden dyke wee mooths pull green fronds twice as lang’s
Split
by Niall Campbell One night I was sitting by my inner life and it was such a little fire and, here and here, the snow was coming down. Doesn’t
Strange Genesis
by Christie Williamson Unkan Genesis Shetlandic Scots I da beginneen dey wir a
The (indirect) evidence for dark matter as inferred from the higher-than-predicted speed of galaxy rotations
by Pippa Goldschmidt The (indirect) evidence for dark matter as inferred from the higher-than-predicted speed of galaxy rotations i.m. Vera Rubin
The Arc
by Stewart Conn Today’s workshop was on the arc of the poem, its variance in accord with structure and length. Compare for instance the hundred
The Ascension of St Christina the Astonishing
by Andy Jackson The Ascension of St Christina the Astonishing Patron saint of millers Above you all I loved my three–fold God;
The Best Day of Your Life
by Patricia Ace The Best Day of Your Life 4th August 1962 You envied the girls who’d had to get married: their hasty ceremonies, their
The Borders
by Henry Bell The borders lie deep in maroon, cimarron Jamaica, Freetown, and Jericho. Men made from tar ten thousand years ago who walked for
The Historian
by Douglas Dunn Where Shug MacFarlane burned his midnight oil In that cramped attic room of his, upstairs From where his granny took ten years to
The Landing Window is Unspeakable
by Miriam Gamble There’s a turn in the stairs beyond which, in the darkness, you are terrified to go — the realm of the creaking life which
The Lost Glen
by James McGonigal One of these years he might miss not only her birthday but the date of her death. Waking
The Ornithologist to His Love
by Stewart Conn I cannot contemplate your taking ill, say, any more than I can the prospect of no dawn, no morning patter of fine rain against
The Pot of Rouge
by Diana Hendry Sometimes I still use it, scrubbing the flattened puff into the hardened stuff then rubbing it on my cheeks as she did on hers.
The Reading
by Tom Pow The Reading Granada, Nicaragua i.m. Derek Walcott The old master swivels his prize– winning head round the audience
The Scottish Cemetery, Kolkata
The Scottish Cemetery, Kolkata by Chrys Salt At first none of us would go there. The kids were frightened of the snakes, the tortured idols of
The Solitary Reaper
by Ken Cockburn was composed for an exhibition linking Wordsworth and Basho at Kamikoro Bunko, Osaka, Japan, in autumn 2016. It draws on
The Surgeon’s Widow
by Vicki Feaver I dug all night in the company of moths — drawn from the dark to the bright beam of my torch — recovering first his skull, last,
Think of it this Way
by John Glenday You find yourself awake, in a bed that is not your own, in a room you do not recognise, in a city where you are a stranger and
Think of it this Way
by John Glenday Late May. Rapefields in open blossom. You pull into a layby to savour that heady fullness of yellow, staining the air an
Tollymore Forest Park
by Alan Gillis Grumbulous midges would hover still in a galaxy of minor rage by the riverside, the river relaxed from a distance but
Unbuilding a house
by Rachel McCrum I am unbuilding a house. Across the living room floor, bricks lie rubbled. Without fail, each morning, I carefully stub my toes,
Visitation
by Liz Niven Visitation Galloway Scots Yesterday, A seen an angel. He came richt intae the kitchen when A was makin the tea. His wings
Visitors
by Yvonne Gray You edged through darkness, tracing the lines of longitude north. The engine droned and wing lights pulsed as you followed the
What’s This You’re Writing?
by Rab Wilson What’s This You’re Writing? English Version There’s none care now about the poet’s work Least of all, not round here anyway.
þögnin
Spring 2017
“Plausible Sounding Names and Addresses”
by Michael Bove Was what the ghost of Emily Dickinson provided to the men who tried to reach her through a Ouija board sometime in the early
10am. Every Day, Even When It Rains
by Michael Mark We’re all widowers here, all old guys, just happened that way. Our dates are dogs. Terriers, labs, mutts. They rush to each
A Blessing
by John Field Land mines exploding, red memories On the battlefield infected and runny. Then home again way too thin And screaming flashbacks In
Ars Poetica
by Carlos Martínez Rivas You’re opposed to Love, its mania for eternity frightens you, its insistent nightingale whistle drives you mad? You only
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams
by Michael Estabrook As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Ate -ba-na-na-too-dah-lah
by Stephen Cramer This is the liquid mantra that the woman in the bespangled mumu repeats every three & a half breaths, practically singing
Berdyaev
by Roger Hickin among philosophers I love the turbulent Berdyaev with his aristocratic habits & alarming facial tic a thinker who conceded
comfort station
by normal “in the wind time walks” — Nanao Sakaki 1 i am building soft nets for death by
Como Las Oscuridades Cueva De Platón
by Leymen Pérez Todo lo que conozco es una puerta a la oscuridad. — Seamus Heaney Entras a la noche que
Cornbread
by Wren Tuatha Cotton takes care of me. I mend and wonder where a word went as Cotton hops out of bed, feeds the herd, showers. I’m late with his
Dateline Sasabe, AZ: US-Mexico Border
by Joe Richey At the international line high–noon cool 100 degree day east of Sasabe, Arizona, pissing in the sizzling sand I burned hand
Definitions for an election year
by Gerald McCarthy Grief was the name of your friends’ dog — a black Labrador that ran off along the shore of Lake Michigan, the summer you
Design for a House
by John Field Design for a House after a poem by Jonathan Holden Sometimes a dream that grips us we become. In the house I’m designing
Don’t chew
by Mark Melnicove Don’t chew on plastic soldiers! my mother shouted, ripping them from my mouth, they’ll make you sick! she warned, leaving me
Dust under the bed
by Mark Melnicove Dust under the bed lies unmoving without complaint. I have to get on my hands and knees to see it, the vacuum grumbling for a
Elegy
by Lauren Camp The hours between York and Kennebunk, between Boston and Salem, and too between Danvers and Logan thin
Emptying the Ashes
by Judy Kaber Each morning they accumulate in the belly of my stove, grey, giving off little smoke or heat, hiding the small, hot coals that I
Every Which Way
by Susan Sherman Imagine a globe spinning through space You are standing in Canada The stars are singularly bright You watch them in
Everything Looks Perfect
by Elizabeth Tibbetts Our guide holds a telescope thick as a man’s arm as she scans the bay for signs of a finback’s spout or the black back of a
Finger of the Goddess
by Bryce Milligan I took the finger of the goddess, broke it from her statue in the shadows cast by years so dim now they cannot be told from
Fireflies
by Stephen Cramer We could have borrowed beads from our parents’ dresser tops or peeled faux mother of pearl buttons from our sweaters, but
Folding Chair
by Wren Tuatha I told you then I would take it out back and kill it with a knife. But I couldn’t do it. You stumbled upon my love today as then.
Great Aunt June Saves the World
by Michael Bove On the banks of the Susquehanna they lived in a shack. Frost between wood slats, a paltry wall between winter and themselves:
Had we but world enough, and time.
by Michael Estabrook Had we but world enough, and time. Andrew Marvell 1 Just like that, before I knew it, 40 years had gone, the
Hamlet
by Carlos Martínez Rivas Hamlet a monologue I What a worry. It’s Saturday. I’ve nothing to drink. It’s not a plan or a
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
by Michael Estabrook Hell is empty and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare 1 Yes I know I could’ve become a famous poet that
in the loved & tortured eyes
by normal “in defeat there are no prophets and no magicians only the look in the loved and tortured eyes”
In the middle of the spelling quiz
by Mark Melnicove In the middle of the spelling quiz, JFK died. The announcement by our principal, an old man who could barely stand anymore,
Leaf Rain Marble
by Roger Hickin i. (after Spiridon Drozhzhin) a leaf blown from its native branch you drift with no road of your own ii. Valdicastello in
Like Monk, Like Lacy
by Roger Hickin i. don’t say too much like Monk’s notes words need silence stop breathe dig check out spaces in between ii. honks peeps pops Lacy
Matter
by Elizabeth Tibbetts If I didn’t walk these grass paths, fit my fingers to the stones to trace names and dates, births and deaths, if I didn’t
Poem in Which There is No Cancer
by Lauren Camp All around, the heat–wringing. When D told me his prostate was like Minute Steak, so much detail left white that he lowered
Prayer on the edge of the morning
by Judy Kaber For the slow stretch of highway under slight stars the frames that hold lost fathers, black and white sisters. For the chives,
Rainbow Room and the Red Chair
by Lauren Camp I am granted every fork, every chair, every blossom, the lantern and saffron, escape or alliance. It’s an agreement I made: to
remembering janis
by normal her pain devil ran so deep, her song was just an exorcism in blues maybe the boys back in port arthur were as she said, that
Ripley
by Judy Kaber After the timbers rotted the roof fell in, the garden became nothing but a field of hay. We made our way in, plucked memories from
Shattered
by Bryce Milligan I’ve seen mezzo sopranos shatter glass and wondered how this high A–flat that sings — an octave above my guitar’s last
Some lines for Amy Winehouse (in the rain)
by Gerald McCarthy The first time I heard Mary Wells sing The one who really loves you — I was eighteen in a place called Tam Ky where it rained
Sowing in the Snow
by Bryce Milligan The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind. — Emily Dickinson Deep in this
Subway
by Stephen Cramer Steel lemmings, they follow one another as they’d grown accustomed to all those years, the old New York City subway cars hauled
Telling a Friend about Reading Lorca in the Alhambra
by Mary O’Donnell This was happiness, I said. We talked about the quick, perfect stealth of those moments. I sat beneath orange trees, and the
The Bear
by Elizabeth Tibbetts It’s a hot May day at the graveyard: enough breeze to keep black flies away, leaves sunning their green naked selves, an
The Masterpiece Project
by Carlos Martínez Rivas BUT things should be as bad as they can get. No jute mattress no water jug. Hanging head down. Ankles bound
The Spanish Painter
by Carlos Martínez Rivas — I want to paint a man with a lantern. — Do it. But what will you put around him to make him stand out? — Night, of
The Tears of Things
by Susan Sherman Will they cry for us when we have gone the objects that adorn our lives When we have left will they miss our touch our need
Those Prostitutes in Cuba
by Mary O’Donnell for J S They were like two kittens, he said, snuggling up to him, they were fun and they liked him. I thought —
Turning East
by Margaret Randall Earth, that solid ball beneath our feet spins in the vastness of space where neither up nor down exists, while on the orbital
Winter Simple
by Elizabeth Tibbetts So this is my winter life at night tucked in bed alone with a book of poems and a magazine (my secret vice) that professes
Winter 2017
A Barn’s Complaint
Absence
Amber
Atheist
Attack of the Blue Tarp Zombies
Cave Walls (Carriers De Lumieres-Les Baux, France)
Counting Down to Zero
Five Postcards From Siberia
For Three Poets
Four Songs of Portland
Home
House
I Ain’t Dead Yet
Idle Days
In waning light
Mementoes
Morandi
My Stepfather’s Cars
Never Coming Near Again
On Drunkenness
On Uncanoonuc Mountain
Pink
Planet Hunger
Riff-raff
Robots
The Cousin
The Futures Market
The Great Poet Comes to Our Town
The Man In Flames
The Octopus and the Tyrant
The Smoking Jacket
Until All of it is Back Like First Light
Weather Report
West
What She Didn’t
When They Lay Down
Winter Apples
Fall 2016
A Newt Peace
Advertence
Anaesthetics
Art
At Cross Purposes
Benoit See the Shapes
Black ’16.
Black Cherry Blossom Tattoo
Carry You Home from the Fair
Evocation
Flotsam.
Fragment
From “Grief Songs: for my wife Adelle
Glymphatically yours
h space g
Happiness
Holes
I Like Being Old
Illegalism: The Poetry of Tomorrow
Lost Socks
Mistake
Music from Childhood
Paris Elegy #5
Parting Prayer
Rembrandt and His Son
Remember When Poetry Was Fun?
Sam Curtis Age 22
Song
Swifts
Tapped free
The Memory Hall
The Red Book of Plums
The Spicer Variations
Ways of looking at Insurance
When Night Comes
Zig-Zags
Summer 2016
“Gone”
A River Not Far From Here
Analysis Paralysis
Ancient Music
and i am eating my morning yogurt
Anniversary Waltz
Anti-Biography
As Easy As
Bali
Culture as Remembrance
dancing at the worlds end
Desmond’s Tea Break
Disowning is the Only Treason
by Lee Sharkey How sweet the world is when a young black woman with eyes of chocolate hums as she irons your clothes. I result from this, the
Ferns
Finn moves through the burn
Finn walks through a dry land
Finn walks through the forest
Flight
For James Tate
George Washington Bridge
Gerontephobia
Hotel
Jefferson
Lame Coyote
Midnight in the ER
Mr. Cognito’s Despair
Passover
Remember when . . .
Show Boat
Soldier
Summer Girl
The Call
The Chip Shop
The Couples
The Izabel Songs
The Lost Things
Three Weeks After
Todd
Twenty-four Years Ago
Underwear Shortage
Up Late Reading Hafiz
Words
workingmans tale
yes,
Young- of- the -Year
Spring 2016
A Hand Of Cinquain
by Mark Granier This game is where letters are given some rope, slack to unwind with, make your name turn its back. What has five fingers, a
A Libation for the Dead
by Brian Kirk In some parts of the world before the feasting starts, before the drinks are poured, a libation for the dead is spilled on arid
A Short Poetry Reading That Means Something Else
by Ciaran O’Driscoll All right, this is what’s happening. Andrew Motion will recite a poem, then I’ll recite one. And then you can go home.
Addesso e brutto
by Macdara Woods 2. It is all translation: tears to music certainty to fear speech to silence and energy to age Not even a rocky outcrop to
Ailish
by Noel Duffy I felt the pebble of what once was pass between us, beady and hard and durable, as we always knew it to be but had forgotten —
and he kisses you
by Eileen Sheehan he kisses you tastes your loneliness sings you a song both beautiful and sad he kisses you tastes salt on your tongue thinks he
Angry Birds
by Adam Wyeth I’m lost in this world of crazy kamikazes selflessly flinging their harlequin bodies against timber planks, panes of glass and
Boghole
by Paul Casey for John W. Sexton the slop migrant vortex of turf muck near swallowed him whole one grey farm day he said, but for a bubble of air
Bonfire
by Jessica Traynor November slips into December like cold air down my throat. I catch my crow’s feet in the mirror and swallow the shock of years
Cassidy’s Hill Revisited
by Jack Harte Three telephone masts on the shoulder of the mountain the three wise kings.
Close Call
by Ciaran O’Driscoll There was a car speeding towards you on the same side of the road, coming
Crossing
by Pat Boran Because his life depended on it, because there was no other path, because night was coming on and the hounds were closing fast he
Crows in November
by John MacKenna Suddenly there is sky where no sky was before, the branches form these unexpected scratches, their leaves gouged overnight. And
Easter Rising
by Janice Fitzpatrick-Simmons I lived inside a Shakespearian winter; malcontent, agreeing to a poverty of the soul. And thus agreed, what
Found — The sycamore shadow rocks and falls
by Afric McGlinchey backward, to the shock of plant and animal, child. Read it in the child’s face. We used to make this garden our own: that bit
from Geomantic
by Paula Meehan The Flood It was only when it receded we knew it for the gift it had been. If truth be told we missed the water. It was exactly
Gather In
by Susan Lindsay where the great oak tree has its roots — between them eroded soil affords shelter, the trunk sturdy behind our backs,
Grandmother
by Cláir Ní Aonghusa i.m. Annie Moore Clancy As I look out from the warren hill My eyes are drawn from Galtee More Towards that graveyard by the
Graveyard Scene
by Pat Boran The morning so cold, the earth so utterly iced up, a child asks her mother how the gravediggers will dig out a hole big enough for
Hidden
by Lorna Shaughnessy He wrapped each one carefully: his father’s whisky glasses, his mother’s cooking spoons, lifted them into the attic to rest
Il tuo amore era bello
by Macdara Woods 1. Which translated text You asked First took me heart and soul into another world And my answer always that same Satyricon I
In This Silent Land.
by Seamus Ruttledge In this silent land Say nothing And keep saying it In this silent land. Men draped in cassocks Possess a Nation’s secrets To
Irish Liberal Foresees Own Enduring Relevance
by Kevin Higgins My words are smoother than the essential oils the Taoiseach last week had his parliamentary assistant rub into his badly
John
by Noel Duffy A memory of rain, of our taxi travelling through deserted streets at dawn, the headlights searching out the road ahead of us as we
Last Wildflower
by Paul Casey for Rosie I scaled the cliffs of Moher to write about the tourists trekked south till there were no more barriers, signs of stick
Lost Things
by Jessica Traynor We are living now in the era of lost things. Can you feel the bee’s wingbeat as it dodges into the slipstream of the
Mullion
by Aideen Henry We are fortresses you and I our fortifications, castellations and buttresses not visible in the main, not until the flowers and
Night Bus
by Brian Kirk Travelling in hope, a child mother stares at her phone willing it to ring; she lays her head on the pane, surrenders to the squalor
Periwinkles
by Adam Wyeth We skirt the edges of the cove, scouring crags at low tide, combing back seaweed hair braided with beads. Up to our ankles in
Poets at the Beach
by Eileen Sheehan i.m Maurice J. Reidy, poet No matter what we write, our rivers will insist on flowing downhill; sand will infiltrate our
Promising music, then falling silent
by Afric McGlinchey Splintery armfuls of the most brazen, persistent kind send one scurrying. massive hands moving clockwise across four corners.
Prothalamion
by Michael Durack Ceaseless sweep of big muddy water, carry the soul of Magnolia State, spirit of forest and cotton field, soul of Caucasian,
Revisiting the Cliffs of Moher
by Stephanie Conn Back then we travelled around Ireland with only a two–man tent in the boot. We followed the light across hills of sand,
Ruins
by Thomas McCarthy Fallen martyrs of Antioch, time’s unrecoverable flora — It’s not me, it’s the garden itself that becomes nostalgic At this
Searching for Dennis O’Driscoll
by Thomas McCarthy The howling November wind, that chill Taxing Master, stiffens Entire buildings in the Castle yard. As we grow older We also
Selfie
by Kevin Higgins “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” George Orwell My hair is the grass on the
Shelley’s Monster Speaks
by Órfhlaith Foyle My left hand Builds a grave and puts words in Dead words that don’t shoot Words that are born but Slip and cripple me. All
Spell Binding
by Theo Dorgan All day I have been sorting keepsakes, sorting and sifting, selecting — feather, bird–bone, leaf and root, a scrap of bright
Stripes and Stars
by Susan Millar DuMars Trumpet, blood, the reveille for American boys in basement rooms — stars behind their skin, their eyes. At night the flag
Summer Table
by John MacKenna My mother was sitting on the cemetery wall, reciting an old poem, not loudly but with the carefulness of one who knows her
Swallows
by John Liddy Outdoors: A Glenstal Abbey Cycle for Fr Brian From a clearing in the woods with a view across the fields, my swallow’s eye
Tessellation
by Stephanie Conn Today or tomorrow the snow will melt. Marina Tsvetayeva All it took was a light dusting of
The Backward Look
by Dónall Dempsey for D.B. The blackbird leaves me a note pinned to the sky that blue beyond blue the tide of the moment turning turning. Time
The Bomb-Maker’s Watch
by Lorna Shaughnessy Clocking in and out. That’s the bit that gets me. That, and watching the clock, that huge clock over the factory floor,
The Grassland Ocean of Mongolia, A vision for Sean Braiden
by Theo Dorgan I think of you driving to the edge of town And beyond the edge, out and over into the ocean of tall grass, The wind combing the
The Light for Damhnait Ní Ríordáin
by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin Come out, I say, and you all come to the light. I look for her, she’s there, the sunlight glancing up from the shining
The routes of loss are varied
by Janice Fitzpatrick-Simmons there is one, it seems to me a narrow mountain track with roiling grey clouds full of fears and rushing wind. I
The Silence of Moher
by John Walsh Clouds settle close, shy of connecting, no abruptness in the air. A fading mellow before the grey moves in, haunting itself for the
Thistle Birth
by Doireann Ní Ghríofa Three weeks after her birth I wrap my tiny daughter in a rainbow blanket and wheel her to the forest. There, I see poems
When the city becomes metaphysical I ask the question
by Kevin Kiely this capitulation of the spirit among cityscape and the banks are empty, lit from inside so poke and digit for your virtual cash
Winter 2016
As Though the Dead
by Peter Schireson I watched my brother ailing, kneeling in a soundproof room mistaking himself for the devil, and the silence clinched me to him
Because My Last Name Begins With A
by Steve Luria Ablon Who wants to read first? Who will take notes? A last name starting with A is always first, always anxious, always armed. So
Because Our Menu Has Changed
by Steve Luria Ablon Use the telephone keypad. Transmit your social security, careful just the last four numbers. Recall your address, your zip
Bedmaking
by Megan Grumbling I sky it high the white as if a child lay giggling here beneath, breathing the light in billows as it settles,
Birthday
by Douglas K. Currier Birthday a poem for J K Durick on the occasion of his birthday I’m not sure when it stops being party and
Black Blood
by Peter Bradley It is such a common occurrence that the eyes of others slide over the sight of it with nary a question or raised eyebrow. As if
Black Holes Can Sing
by Kathleen Ellis To sing, was singing, the lowest note in the universe, too low for humans to hear, 57 octaves below middle C. Is there a score
Blur
by Christine De Luca When a day is too short to forge a history, a shared archive, she stumbles on boxfuls, unrecorded When time concertinas
Copper
by Fern G. Z. Carr a fox kit drowning awash in pus bloated abscess burgeoning infection
Dante Gabriel Rosetti to Elizabeth
by Keith Dunlap I have entombed my love poems to you in the moldering casket of your heart. Yet I keep returning to the plot of grass, keep
Deep Cleaning
by Megan Grumbling With broomstick, plumb between the claws’ dark troth of shriveled dregs and trawl it out of there, thing, thought, and all
Edges
by Frederick Wilbur Too praising, you could sabotage this poem, finely wrought, keenly carved, hand thrown, the kind crafted perhaps with an
Heliopause
by Kathleen Ellis In this place where the wind from the sun gives way to the wind from the stars the Earth waits for its guests to return
Hermaphropoetics / Blood
by Rochelle Owens In an early version a deaf mute a hermaphrodite captured after the siege a hermaphrodite emptied of allegory seated on the
Hermaphropoetics / Blood
by Rochelle Owens In an early version a deaf mute a hermaphrodite captured after the siege a hermaphrodite emptied of allegory seated on the
Hit’s anidder day/It’s another day
by Christine De Luca I da gairden o da Shaltered hooses shö neebs aff, dovers owre at aese. Shö’s med da möv fae her heeven, her ain peerie
In Which Coyote Slums as a Cactus
by Megan Grumbling Entreated with white limbs and gall, he came late, the next morning, glutton that he is for irony, false maidens. Choose your
It’s another day
by Christine De Luca It’s another day In the garden of the Sheltered houses she slips into each contented nap. She’s made the move from idyll of
Magpie Sonata
by Mark Terrill The black and white of it all; ancient majestic oak trees blasted over in the storm — entire rows of birch and poplar knocked
Memo from Siddhartha
by Mark Terrill If you can navigate the subway station in Hamburg–Altona climb the stairs and walk through the train station among the
Memorial
by Peter Schireson I’m coming to the cemetery tonight and I’m going to lie on top of your grave, baby pull a blanket up over us, me on the grass,
Mrs. Turtle travels up again from the stream
by Judy Kaber I don’t know why she comes. Eggs already laid and yet, she keeps pulling her heavy body over the dry rocks to rest finally on the
Near the Coast
by David Linebarger Older now, few appointments. Time beyond time, the sky. The moon’s many colors, Diana’s animals. Seventeen hungry cats. A
On seeing Munch’s The Scream
by Christine De Luca On seeing Munch’s The Scream Palms cupped over ears, she lets out an unholy screech; the heavens a whirl of blood–red,
Protecting Our Own
by Charlene Langfur What do we do now? Global warming is rising. It’s not surprising. I walk out into the world in spite of it. Each day I pass
Real Estate
by Margaret Young Another June, embarrassing roses brandish their sexual petals. The swan– necked excavator digs up the shady street while
River Tidings
by Brian Evans-Jones No rain here — the clouds thicken but keep mum and if not quite still then at least demure. No rain though the air’s charged
Sea City Museum: first return after emigration
by Brian Evans-Jones Sea City Museum: first return after emigration (Southampton, England) She thinks our son’s first word is “Mom”: I
Senior Special en el Tennessee Grill
by Daisy Zamora Senior Special at the Tennessee Grill translated from Spanish by George Evans Here they make landfall
Sitting Ducks
by Fern G. Z. Carr Death is a carnival shooting gallery — a line of ducks blankly gliding by, little tail feathers curled upward, glazed eyes
Streetcar, San Francisco
by Daisy Zamora Streetcar, San Francisco translated from Spanish by George Evans A black guy shakes an empty potato chip can begging
Sunday Morning Coming Up
by Mark Terrill Sunday morning coming up out of the subway in Berlin the last shreds of lucidity torn away from the streets not far from the
Tale
by Judy Kaber My brother bragged that he could hold Orion in the palm of his hand, so I stared as he stretched his arm to the night sky,
The Abandoned Psychiatric Hospital
by Keith Dunlap What is it that is left behind to remind us of what occupied this place? Cracked plaster, broken glass, and peeling paint, a
The architecture of time
by Christine De Luca The architecture of time Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, Firenze Jasmine is already fading on the wall and a
The Former Slaughterhouse at Villa Epecuen
by Keith Dunlap Among a stand of long dead trees bleached white by the intense salinity of flood waters that consumed the town, a road built in
Tucked in a Seam
by Frederick Wilbur Days of tenacious March when songbirds drain the feeders like visiting magicians, I watch from my desk window — the urge to
Waking at 3 a.m.
by Steve Luria Ablon I have to pee even though I don’t. I place my arms across my chest like the Buddha, to hold myself here. This is how
When I See Them Passing By
by Daisy Zamora When I See Them Passing By translated from Spanish by George Evans When I see them passing by I sometimes ask myself: What must
When I See Them Passing By
by Daisy Zamora translated from Spanish by George Evans When I see them passing by I sometimes ask myself: What must they feel, the ones who
Windowsill
by John J. Ronan 1 Quartz From four feet you can imagine candy, a lemony tease that turns cruel closer — rock found in the Mohave, a common
Wishbone
by Kim Addonizio It’s bad luck to break a cricket or a baby, bad to open an evil spirit in the house or refuse a kiss if it’s offered with a pot
Fall 2015
A Mercy
by Christian Teresi As a boy he hauled full buckets, first light breaching The details of cleared acreage, and thankfully again When the day
A MORNING WRITHING WITH Revelation
by Clayton Eshleman A MORNING WRITHING WITH Revelation [Bacon & Giacometti at Gagosian]
A PERFECT CIRCLE
by Jerome Rothenberg THREE POEMS FROM “A FURTHER WITNESS” for Anselm Hollo in memoriam A PERFECT CIRCLE the protocol of light runs
A Requiem for Cooking
by Rebecca Newth For behold you look for the dill sauce but it is deep in the cupboard and lo, there is no one to help. Had you
A Variation on Machado
by Jim Harrison I worry much about the suffering of Machado. I was only one when he carried his mother across the border from Spain to France in
After The Fog
by Robert VanderMolen Shaving: If I had a thinner face Like D. H. Lawrence Or Robert Creeley I’d grow a beard (I told her) * There were odd
After The Funeral
by Robert VanderMolen There was talk of fishing, cancer And the stock exchange. The trick Said Denny, is to be a contrarian, Not many have such
AS THE SKY GOES BLACK
by Jerome Rothenberg THREE POEMS FROM “A FURTHER WITNESS” for Anselm Hollo in memoriam AS THE SKY GOES BLACK fixed in place or running
Beauty’s Voice
by Diane Wakoski When the night taps on glass and, in the dark, I brush past down comforters, puffy as birds fluffed and huddled
BRAID
by Floyce Alexander Photo of scalp hung by one nail. Mud–smeared window of the cold house. Some man’s family crowding together. This earth
Carol Chalik, 1945– ?
by Gerard Malanga She could’ve been famous in her time or in some future time, had someone taken notice, mentored her, paid homage. But I
Cold Sand before the Fire
by Diane Wald Not sure if the buck in the rose garden is a sign or a just buck in the rose garden. He raises his velvet antlers as if he were
CONVERSATIONAL
by Floyce Alexander I could say little happens here. Snow melts, ice forms. Tornados seldom follow Though cold descends, heat rises Whirring
Correspondences
by Dan Gerber Natania Darvath’s Songs of the Auvergne in my minds ear while the daylight ghost of a waning quarter–moon drifts just above
COUSIN TOMMY EXPLAINS IT ALL
by Paul Fericano Enough already enough with all this Leonardo DiCaprio crap All this stinking garbage about art for fucking art’s sake This is no
Curiosity
by George Bowering The neonate looked up at me with eyes I have known forever. Then clouds, white on top, grey underneath, slid behind those
Déjà Vu
by Gerard Malanga Lost among the rubble of greed, the deletion of history, pre–history, post–history and beyond the beyond.
Do You Remember This, Katja?
by Richard Jarrette Our destination hovered between Pacific mist and looming clouds conceding a glimpse of arctic blue sky. We half–guess
EPONYMOUS PAUL
by Paul Pines EPONYMOUS PAUL Easter morning the notion of waking to the sound of a trumpet or its corollary the Roshi’s well–timed
FAT TONY BECOMES AN EDITOR
by Paul Fericano Not that good sense has anything to do with poetry but if for some reason I should decide That I’m not completely satisfied with
For A Man With Guava In His Mouth
by Sharon Olinka This is for the day your lips parted, and I sucked guava candy, melting in your mouth. Candy bought the week your mother died.
FROM TERWILLIGER HOT SPRINGS
by Joseph BruChac Those four stones I plucked from the deep bottom of the hottest pool of its healing waters disintegrated in my pocket soon
Galway Kinnell
by Gerard Malanga Goodbye Galway as my sciatica is acting up, and you turn to laugh. Constant reminders, headaches of so much left
George Balanchine, 1904–1983.
by Gerard Malanga Elephants are the greatest dancers. George Balanchine knew this. They make no claim to beauty but overwhelm with nimble
Glen and Tom
by Robert VanderMolen Whatever hotel or town it was He stood on a balcony with a drink After a long day driving in the heat The side of his truck
God-weather
by Richard Jarrette We could walk freely inside Nebuchadnezzar’s killing furnace most of the time because our God–weather was generally
Half -Haunted
by Carol Bachofner Old Pima came down with the wandering sickness. It edged in when he was digging for water out back. Took over, settled into
if you’re sleeping and not dreaming, you are dead
by Diane Wald i am broken. and my fissures have not been repaired with gold, you can trace your finger along my faults, and cut your fingers on
In winter when the towels get dry just by being in the house
by Diane Wald My undertaker wears a lively cologne. I like it. I believe in his religion, for he has seen a man pack up his falsetto and travel,
Metamorphoses
by Christian Teresi The Naga were headhunters, but wrote butterfly On the parched reliefs of temples, and in manuscripts born By monastics that
mouth surfing (preverbs)
by George Quasha 1 on the pale trail of the pores on fire Speaking with chilies in your mouth produces
my good ex-friend godzilla
by Diane Wald i wasn’t aware that kind of ruination could happen his twin had died when they were born but it took him a year to tell me then
Myth is History
by George Bowering The toilet paper I’ve used during my life — do I owe the earth a tree? Two trees? But wait, haven’t my turds fed the earth, or
nd
by Gerard Malanga Photographs have a way of becoming souvenirs of happier times, reminders of a time and place; sometimes the nd as a
NIGHT OUT
by Floyce Alexander Screams rattle the amphitheater Of lost dreams. A horror film In progress nears its end. I’m restless; aren’t you, Without
Nirvana
by Dan Gerber A hundred quail on the grass outside my window, and the dogs are a little upset, and at least one hundred doves — band–tailed
NORTH TOWER Exploding
by Clayton Eshleman 10:28 AM: top of the Tower: the antenna spire begins to descend
Old Books
by Dan Gerber My life’s companions, showing their age — spines peeled back, bindings frayed — stacks of brittle leaves, kept with tape and rubber
On Tuesday
by Robert VanderMolen Spotting a van logging Through beeches, where you hadn’t Realized there was a road Staring from your canoe, water lilies
Pacific Theatre
by Rebecca Newth On the worst day we received a letter for me after the immediate death on Okinawa and the letter said Hi Becky you must be a big
Requiem — My Virginia Woolf
by Richard Jarrette I didn’t know the contours of my own face till you held it in your hands and said, I’m taking this everywhere. These seven
Rod
by Gerard Malanga The sunset coalescing. The twilight waiting waiting patiently. Those commingling voices snagged in some forlorn vista. So many
Spirit
by Jim Harrison Rumi advised me to keep my spirit up in the branches of a tree and not peek out too far, so I keep mine in the very tall willows
Technological Nostalgia
by Max Hjortsberg Remember when you could fix everything yourself ? Some baling twine, a coat hanger, a pair of pliers, and naturally a roll of
THE FLOW OF TIME
by Jerome Rothenberg THREE POEMS FROM “A FURTHER WITNESS” for Anselm Hollo in memoriam THE FLOW OF TIME to pose a question & to
The Forbearance of Dogs
by Rebecca Newth He puts up with so much, and here I am not being facetious, the dirt on his coarse spine my attempts to
THE GHOSTS OF CARLISLE INDIAN SCHOOL
by Joseph BruChac The ghosts of the Carlisle Indian School are drinking again tonight down by the church. You can hear them chanting the same
THE GOLDEN RATIO
by Paul Pines bare limbs just greening taxonomy starkly visible implicate echo of leaves porches at night harboring shadows we walk my old
The Kitchen
by Max Hjortsberg When you walk through the door of the past be careful not to close it, leave it slightly cracked, allowing the light of the
The Maltese M
by George Bowering Surely it tells us something that more people read Paradise Lost than even begin reading Paradise Regained. Things used to
things done for themselves (preverbs) for Susan
by George Quasha 1 last first words We walk together like a field of
Unfortunate Dinner
by Sharon Olinka Winter, 1973: her gallery. Margarita smelled of amber. Daughter of an exiled countess. Silver bracelets, three on each wrist.
Vows
by Jim Harrison I feel my failure intensely as if it were a vital organ the gods grew from the side of my head. You can’t cover it with a hat and
Winter Morning on the Yellowstone
by Max Hjortsberg Cottonwoods lining the edge of the river the leafless branches white with hoarfrost, a phantom coral reef from a vanished
Summer 2015
A Description of New England
by Mark DeCarteret A Description of New England “ . . . the paradise of those parts.” John Smith It was
A Long Drive for a Short Hike in Maine
by Molly M. Caldwell You sleep most of the way like you do most of the time. From Ellsworth to Machias I drink cold coffee from a handmade mug
a toast to the apocalypse
by John Lorence a toast to sunlight’s smidgen of disclosure. to the magnificent bath of dark clouds being drawn in the west end. to the
Against the Orchestra
by Philip Dacey If it’s to be a concerto for violin, let the orchestra score be transcribed for piano so that we hear two voices in dialogue with
Amber
by Pippa Little warmed from within you thin as I hold you up to light, slow as aromatic malt swirl you to my mouth so all my vowels melt, leggy
At The General’s Graveside
by Pippa Little drops of light drown the carved letters of his name hero of war / in love, a deserter the cold weight of him seeps from her
Black
by Philip Dacey “My mother never let me wear black; now I wear black all the time.”
Black
by Philip Dacey “My mother never let me wear black; now I wear black all the time.”
Black and White
by Philip Dacey St. Louis. The Forties. The neighborhood poor white. (Or say white trash, given how when the flight to the suburbs happened
Cassandra talks in her sleep
by Annie Stenzel But if you’re waiting for me to Say things the way I used to say things, don’t bother. There is no demand for plangent images
Confounded
by Bruce Holsapple Small moth folded dusty white on the Desk Encyclopedia zonked by the lamp I’d guess but who could argue that, given a
Earth Grazers
by Pippa Little Over blue woods soaked in night–juices They nose low from star fields and ice caps, move true To earth’s curve, surprised
Egg
by Pippa Little fits in a palm or snug in an eggcup. Cool, undimpled shades of lukewarm milk, magnolia emulsion, plain and neat as clouds on an
Eulogy
by Molly M. Caldwell The skin on my father’s calves hangs like a translucent bag full of tiny purple lightning bolts — little blue streams,
Friend Peter
by Bruce Holsapple Opened window by the sink dark wind clattering thru wood blinds — reminds me, washing dishes, of an island breeze & it is,
Friend Peter
by Bruce Holsapple Opened window by the sink dark wind clattering thru wood blinds — reminds me, washing dishes, of an island breeze & it is,
Her Hero
by André T. Demers In the end, she said, he survived. Besides, she sighed, they say that love is a road and even crawling is heroic. She smiled,
How the Last European Film Will Go
by Tim Suermondt The charming couple will split over bad sex and incompatible philosophy — the long tracking shots and extreme close–ups
Hunger
by Sarah Anderson You see, it was hot orange light back in the forest by the rusted water tower where he said never turn this way — flames
Judgment
by Ronald J. Pelias My sister said on the witness stand her child was just under bad influences; she didn’t think irreparable damage had been
Karner Blue Butterfly
by Marc Swan It’s a small show in a grand old brick synagogue converted to artist studios — a photographer is hosting a display of eight
Language
by Ceridwen Hall There’s an island in the middle of a lake. During summer, boats go back and forth. People bring dogs and bicycles. They circle
Lorca’s Calling
by S Stephanie Lorca’s Calling after reading the documents on Lorca’s death finally released by Granada Police, 04/2015 I’m calling in
Meeting in Galway
by Sarah Anderson 1. They agreed to meet at half seven, the pub on the corner with the bright yellow door. He told her to look for his faded red
Mostly, You’ll Find Me
by James Rioux Mostly, You’ll Find Me for Franz Wright Forgive me this silly little riddle: of how the world keeps giving me these bruised
Mostly, You’ll Find Me for Franz Wright
by James Rioux Forgive me this silly little riddle: of how the world keeps giving me these bruised sunsets pooling into night, the endless jokes
Navy Coffee
by Eric Forsbergh Cook! Boil us a pot. Fresh. Or yesterday’s. We don’t care as long as there’s no skin of mold. Better take it bitter. Black.
Naxos in April
by Tim Suermondt Gray and blue and beautiful, the night of perfect possibilities is here. The man wipes his shoes for some last minute spit and
New England Style, Move-In Ready
by André T. Demers The floors slope from east and west towards the center beam of the house. Four pine wedges had been hammered between the
Not Going to See Jean Valentine Get Her Gold Medal Award
by Tim Suermondt To put it in poetic language: it’s raining Brahmins and sharks — and lately my spirit and my body have been working in tandem,
On Coming to Her
by George Repp It’s not about originality as much as it is borrowing paints to generate a message that targets the reader to feel and feel
Rain Barrel
by Bruce Holsapple Four wood rats drowned in a rain barrel, after recent storms not all at once — one after another repeated the same mistake
Renaissance Faire
by Michael Biehl Death watches from an upstairs window the little scene transpiring below: six semi–dangerous eighth graders, jostling a
Responder
by Marc Swan In the kitchen by a stash of red wine, I meet Alice from Bucks County, a dentist with a story. She’s been married, widowed,
Ripe
by Kathleen Clancy At the end of a summer’s day gravity pushed me down toward the earth. I bounced once, landing on the sloping pavement. I
Shakespeare’s Mistress
by Kathleen Clancy Shakespeare! Over and over and over again he professes his love: longer than time, more solid than stone, immune to actual war
South Central Los Angeles, 1975
by Marc Swan There’s no gunshot or mayhem just the thought raging like wildfire inside my head. He’s an older man just released from Atascadero.
Spence Hot Spring
by Molly M. Caldwell Spence Hot Spring Jemez River, NM TripAdvisor said be careful not to swallow Janis Joplin’s pubic hairs, and mind the
Spirit Board
by Mark DeCarteret “ . . . and so we got rid of the day as well as we could.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne All that separates you from the past is this
Spiritual Resourcefulness
by Michael Biehl Every time the world ends, he breaks out in loneliness, like chickenpox. Then the world–wheel, creaking, turns again, not
Stuck / Torn
by Annie Stenzel Stuck / Torn All change is for the worse. — Anon. Because the rut has earned its fame for comfort, being now furnished
Suburbia
by Michael Biehl God bless cookie–cutter houses, cookie–cutter poems, cookie–cutter people. Pigeons! Pizzas! Penelope gazes
Success Comes To A Place Too Sad To Have A Name
by Mark Parsons We started with communal living, drugs. Then got involved in real estate scams, extortion, blackmailing a restaurant owner for
The Spy Who Came In For His Appointment
by Mark Parsons The difference between a perfectionist and a man obsessed, the difference between us, doctor.
The Theater of Breakfast
by Philip Dacey Knife, banana, bowl — props for the theater our father staged each day as he gave voice to slice after slice: “I am the Emperor,
the visitation
by John Lorence hours ago, in what is not yesterday, before arriving in his moment of rage, before being too shy was underlined, before ripping
Travelogue
by Ceridwen Hall Travelogue Edmonton When I cannot see the earth or hear beyond the roar of the engine, nothing seems real but my cramped
Triolet: At Juilliard
by Philip Dacey The female pianist’s long blonde lock of hair swings down before her face as she is playing fugal Bach. The female pianist’s long
What’s In A Name, From A Height
by Mark Parsons In the town square below community service ex–convicts with plumb hatchets, chisels and mallets chip and whittle, carving
Why I Left the Poetry Reading?
by S Stephanie Something about the clouds in the windows was upsetting, they were traveling on before I could grasp them and the poets were
Spring 2015
Adam and the Serpent
by Donna J. Long So you were born short, stout, wingless, someone for whom fight or flight was canceled by a genetic cog whose wheel was yet to
Aubade
by Sandy Weisman I get up to row on the river. My scull glides to the gloomy edge of the water thick with spent lilies. A great blue heron
Call Me Ish . . . kabibble
by Suzanne Osborne Yeah, never really did the whale hunt thing. Mind you, I have had some strange bedfellows, and I know a shipwreck when I swim
Delightful
by Shana Genre Sky dark — stars penetrating the black. You meet me out back, your hand soft and damp with sweat; my belly sparks at the tender
Drinking On Our Couch
by Ron Androla Drinking On Our Couch The Television Plays You are a pain in my brain. Wine from eastern Australia Is possible Merlot piss From
El Rio del Oso
by Larry Schug What is the name of rain when it fails to fall from a cloud What do you call a river no water flowing within its banks having
Erotica & Admissions
by Ron Androla You are Emily, the lovely Emily, Erie newscaster, soft-light Emily. Emily’s nipples taste Like buttery sandalwood Smoke woven
Escarpment Trail
by Gerard Grealish Escarpment Trail for Brenna Had I not forgotten exactly what it meant we would have hiked a different course back the same we
From Gloat to Goat
by Gerald Locklin His first time back to Plant-watering duties Subbing for his wife While she spent the days Babysitting their
His Life as a Librarian
by Jefferson Navicky He worked as a young man in the medallions collection of the National Library, and published scholarly articles on
How It Began
by Donna J. Long His proposal was unexpected. I leapt delighted — yes — into his arms, eager for pleasure legal & tender. Shopping for a
King Arthur Died in AD 538
by Michael Estabrook Things are about the same here, same as always, snowy out another boring lunch. Did you know that King Arthur (of the Round
Latina
by Michael Estabrook On the beach he surreptitiously snaps sultry photos of a long-haired Latina stretched out on a blanket sipping a cool
legacy
by normal here & there i’d see his poetry he’d probably seen mine in the same places occasionally i’d read a piece i don’t know if he’d read
Nothing Special Anymore
by Gerald Locklin Toad had always assumed He would one day make A return trip to Cuba, Where he’d enjoyed A Hemingway Symposium In the summer of
Play Under Review
by Gerard Grealish With the clock running down the guard drove to the basket. Before the ref ’s whistle stopped shrieking Foul! my brother
Plum Dandy
by Jennifer Raha Not intrinsically but through misplaced items — a lost scarf, a necklace, a turquoise bracelet. Nothing substantive. She no
Poetry Is Always About Life
by Ron Androla Music is always about life. Painting, Novels, the best films armed with Magic, fur spoons, sculptures of The wind. Is that the
quoting silence
by normal “where there are humans you’ll find flies, and buddhas” — issa i was fresh from the street i
remembering sean
by normal sean o’neill, eugene’s son passed the syringe over to me “i come from an old line of fuckups,” he said “maybe this is the year i follow
Ruse
by Jennifer Raha Like the first Ferris wheel, he pulled me up, looped me like unspooled thread. Like rope. Apothecary, roulette muse. Azure
she ran
by Roger Bernard Smith she ran a foam gun in the modular home plant friday nights we jitterbugged at gleason’s on forest ave before they
Spring Thaw
by Mike Bove Side streets roil with rough slush, diminutive whitecaps loll at the foot of driveways, mailboxes wear melting crowns and bow low
Story of the Modern Man after the Accident that is now His Life
by Jefferson Navicky I’ve cussed myself into a concussion, and I can no longer speak, only write the dumbest words, like ‘frog” and “cup” and
The Body as Glass House
by Donna J. Long A window by day hides what’s inside, like a mirror reveals only an exterior. Architecture teaches me to be able to look within
the day you were born, no one died,
by normal the telephone book of history opened & closed & SLAMMED SLAMMED SLAMMED you were one up in a world of diminishing returns &
The Departure
by Donna J. Long The Departure Tulum, Mexico The market square is shuttered, empty but for the dogs standing around, barely glancing at us as we
The Gravel Diaries
by Martin Ott The pen scratches a long-ago itch. A one-eared dog brays at a coyote invading his street. The delivery truck coughs too close for
the thing is, you see
by normal god has big eyes & he puts them in the mouths of little children & you can do what you will with a child, but one way or
there I was on the bench with a contraption
by Roger Bernard Smith you’ve heard this story a dozen times her arms above her head elbows at her side a trick with her backside tucked into the
There is a Rumor That During Construction of one of Portland’s Prominent Thoroughfares in the 1850s, Some Workers Died in a Freak Accident and the Road was Built Atop Their Bodies
by Mike Bove The men buried beneath Commercial Street are hardly resting. They died where they worked, stayed where they fell, and rolled only
Twenty Years On
by Suzanne Osborne Is dead acute — the first gasp of loss and relief when your jagged presence was torn from my life? Or is it chronic — the long
Uncle Jack
by Mike Pulley You died twice, appropriately, Since you lived two lives in one, A childhood future-enfolded, a kid embedded In age-spot skin. The
Who the hell greenlighted it?
by Gerald Locklin Kim Jung Un III, Ruler of North Korea, Might have shown a little leniency To the cyber-circuits of SONY If he hadn’t found The
Winter 2015
“That’s Funny”
by Craig Evenson will hold, for life in general, the way an appended amen suspends a second thought, but won’t explain how it moves in oceans
Buddies for Life
by Greg McBride Buddies for Life summer 1961 Squealing rubber slick out of McDonald’s, our gang of four sixteens, two cars, tears
Checklist
by Douglas K. Currier Start by giving away the good things, the accumulated of value. Choose carefully, and do it slowly. Say that you are
Darkroom
by Robert Kennedy Once familiar objects turn hostile In this cubic void of dark space. Bloodless hands reach from angular sleeves, My throat
Debtless
by Kevin Rabas When the loan officer shakes my hand, his hand is a big mitt, ham shank, boxer’s big thick grip, and, though he’s kindly, he’s
Disagreeable Things
by John Blair Too much furniture, too many pens. Too many monks cribbing nickels, and sleeping in parks. Kenko in his idleness squats in the
Disambiguation
by G. H. Smith The time has come to put away childish things. You laugh, but when were we ever punctual? Look, the ferry is engaged in foreplay
e. e.
by Marcia F. Brown i. i. think u.u. would have loved this texting tweeting like a broken bird scattering the chaff
Exile
by Robert Kennedy Listen. The key is turning In the derelict lock. Remember. The exile is strange And knocks softly on the door, Not wishing to
Fayetteville Drum Room, 1995
by Kevin Rabas That night, I snuck into the practice room, the drums crumpled up. I had sticks. I played the low tom first, called on my heart
Field Grief
by M. P. Jones IV Late in the darkness startled by the sound of what could have been the bleating of a young calf the one my father bottle fed
How is it?
by Tom Saya How is it all those worlds out there don’t collide, obliterating each other? or given the great distances, how is it without
I Have Lots of Hearts
by Adam Scheffler I have lots of hearts, it’s grisly. I leave them bloody, soaking the pillow. I keep them in a drawer where they turn gray. It’s
I Need a New Belt
by Kevin Sweeney I need a new belt. The old one is fraying at the edges though it doesn’t matter since I’m too fat and usually don’t tuck in my
In the Heart of Things
by Wang Ping We surrender Even if we don’t know how No thought No thunder No flight from hope to despair No silence No sorrow Time folds and
Inscription
by Major Jackson Five gold wash crystal pearls on a wrist. Her seraph–skin glistening when a spigot is turned off in the apartment next
Moving Day
by Greg McBride It was a moving day, the barn–raising commune of that time. Afterward, we all milled about her new apartment, mugs and
My Son
by Greg McBride A toddler sprawls across his mother’s slim and lovely lap, his hair a reddish gold, his face a whim of freckles. His hands softly
Ode to Mt. Philo
by Major Jackson After avocado–colored inclines, after dawdling ascents over fern & foliage, after long trillium gazes and careful
Pedagogical Metaphysical Poetical Blues on Wednesday
by Kevin Sweeney Pedagogical Metaphysical Poetical Blues on Wednesday After the Latest Snowstorm The girl who says she has written two books is
Sentiment
by G. H. Smith What was it, muse, you so desperately wanted me to say? You tried everything to no avail. Even now steeped in well–earned
Tanka
by Mimi White when I saw the boat tipped on its side a ghost entered our story it did not matter that the tide would right it Tanka
Terminal Moraine
by Leonore Hildebrandt I worry about gutters, the washed–out road, corroded pipes. And squirrels — they are everywhere — on edge, just like
The Blade Came Too Close to My Own Throat
by Didi Jackson The blade came too close to my own throat. I walk as far away as I can from the home of your hands. Here, in the dark, I
The Border
by Doug Anderson They come across by light of cell phone, by blood trail, by the gleam of the coyote’s incisor, by the eye in the dollar’s
The Day the Wind Took Up and Carried
by Marcia F. Brown Barely dawn and a new bird with a lunatic song is perched outside my window — six startling–shrill
The Disclaimers
by G. H. Smith This is not a poem about the inevitability Of old age, decrepitude, and death. You won’t find a single Reference to lost
The Instinct to Swarm
by Wang Ping The ones in the brain that allow us to make decisions, not just about what to order for lunch, but about basic perceptions — making
The Lantern Man
by John Blair There was in every hollow A hundred wrymouthed wisps. Dafydd ap Gwilym (trans. Wirt Sikes, 1340)
The Other Side
by John Blair Much there is that is unbeautiful, much there is that rubs the eye raw like sand and knuckles. In some farflung plane of penury
Un-Relatable Poem
by Adam Scheffler A man cobbles together his life together as best he can, skimming these shark–abandoned waves but must so many pastimes
What Happened to Mrs. McNair?
by Kevin Sweeney I blame myself. My overwrought wise–guy persona can’t resist a good joke, so when a new family buys the big house on
Window
by John Blair We whistle tunes while God’s work gets done above us in trees locked in screes of bagworm silk and dead leaves, streetlights
Wish Lantern Over Muscongus Sound
by Rachel F. Seidman We know nothing about currents of wind or water. We have only hope and intuition. And a slightly risky faith that our
You are dead, Lewis Carroll
by Adam Scheffler You are dead, Lewis Carroll, the young man said And yet your hands are so strong You are juggling two chairs, a saw, and your
Your Husband was a City in a Country of Sorrow
by Didi Jackson Your husband was a city in a country of sorrow. You wanted a door, you climbed a wall instead. As some trees stay green all year,
Fall 2014
a short history of rain
by David Filer it only fell when it became too heavy for the clouds to bear * and then it had no choice
April Fool’s Song
by David Filer Stayed up late last night, Thoughts in disarray. Woke early this morning, thought of you all day. I think something’s coming
Beech Hill
by Gary Lawless i blue below our feet blue field field full of berries blue bay below clouds, crows, wood lily under blue sky, on our way to
Bight Marks
by Hamish Danks Brown Ocean asserted itself all night wiping away sea–grassed sleep then drain–dreamed until light and dumped my
Blues Moon
by Kendall Merriam Blues Moon for Raised by Wolves Fog, fog can’t see anything its blocking life a long time back I was certain about
Carlos Santana Wins Medal
by Kendall Merriam Carlos Santana Wins Medal for My Brother Parker and All Drummers Every time I listen to his music I think of you Maybe
Clarion Vice, Canto 16
by Russ Sargent Here I am, donning the savage bliss. Charging my genome with metagrams before those mutant maggots show up and try to teach me
de Kooning Grotesque
by Carolyn Gelland “Beauty becomes petulant to me,” said de Kooning. “I like the grotesque. It’s more joyous. . . . ” jackals
Divide
by Bruce Holsapple Sandy mountain road, twisting high thru pine & jumper, into that saddle where the peaks divide, rocky gullies start hers,
Divide
by Bruce Holsapple Sandy mountain road, twisting high thru pine & jumper, into that saddle where the peaks divide, rocky gullies start hers,
Doubt
by Steve Luttrell It was always about beginnings. The first push to what seemed most insistent. The impulse then to act, to bring off some
Doubt
by Steve Luttrell It was always about beginnings. The first push to what seemed most insistent. The impulse then to act, to bring off some
Final Exam
by Jim Bishop –1– remember? you are driving down a country road and they appear from nowhere no from black trees by the road three
Fly Fishing With Sun Ra
by Justin Patrick Moore I went fly fishing with Sun Ra last night. We waded into particle fields of ice to sit on the edge of Saturn’s glistening
for Kate
by Gary Lawless today the blueberries taste like pine. I look across the field, to the cemetery, see horses, running, prayer flags in the breeze.
Gore Pour
by Jack Collom nosebleed sonnet Gore Pour The nose . . . when I was young I used to be A picker. “Blow that mess!” Investigate That obstacle.
News of the Missing Girl
by Jessica Purdy An image recurs: a yellow leaf everyone thought would land is condemned mid–fall to the purgatory of a spider’s web.
No Need
by Mark Melnicove Now that Everyone — is dying — and there is Nothing — to stop them — hallucinogenics are superfluous. I do not need — Anything
Openings
by Justen Ahren i. When I need to see god, I watch my children sleep. The trees in the distance sway in the wind and snow. When I am in need, I
Ouroboros
by Kristin Agudelo I once met a snake with a brown paper tongue grocery bag full of meanings, not all of them sound. He slipped up beside me,
Overnight Bombing
by Justen Ahren “what times are these / when to write a poem about love / is almost a crime because it contains / so many
Pickerel Weed
by Carl Little I know these, too, from the pond I skirted as a child, the green cake knives clustered along the shore doubling in shallows where
Poem Without a Title
by Klaus Gerken Canto II Riverrun Locksmith Flow of lava that destroys but replenishes the earth Life was not possible without the lava Building
Selected Hokku / Senryu
by Joe Richey mottled butterfly alights on a rock to roar * ancient pond polluted frog belly up * o star o powerful western star! are you a star?
Selected Hokku / Senryu
by Joe Richey mottled butterfly alights on a rock to roar * ancient pond polluted frog belly up * o star o powerful western star! are you a star?
Six Lists in November
by Dana Wilde the wind riffling dead grass waves in the blue water brown leaves hanging from bushes milkweed feathers: the last
Small Green Grass Snake
by Carl Little Small Green Grass Snake Great Spruce Head Island, Maine Slithers through the grass, although slithers doesn’t do its
Sonnet: Earth & Sky
by Dana Wilde When seeds fly goldenrod & ragweed Racing driven wind like birds Across the sky, and sky like blue From north wind water upward
The Gutter of New York- de Kooning
by Carolyn Gelland The gutter of New York grounded me — that’s my kind of space. There are streets here too that give me the same feeling. There
The Lost Child
by Wesley McNair Remembering all the sorrow at the last Sykes reunion, when the family patriarch and war hero, Homer, went down at the microphone
Three Attempts
by Bruce Holsapple Walked a scrawny trail thru the grass & trees east from Carizzozo Canyon searching for Grapevine Spring a beguiling name,
Three Winds
by Jayne Benjulian Would Mother be young, standing in the middle of Knight Street talking to Frances Druck? The hem of her yellow apron ripples.
War
by William Carpenter It’s one of those nights after the surrender of Iraq, not much on TV any more, your family’s in another state for Easter,
Wire
by Jayne Benjulian 1 I left him once when he disappeared for a day I left him once no one heard a word — he surfaced later — what did
Summer 2014
“ . . . leaves: They will cure my hunger”
by James Reidel “ . . . leaves: They will cure my hunger” Ch’en Tzu –lung The grass is dusted by frost and your bare feet grow
A Water Jar
by Stephen Petroff Whenever he went out in the woods to work, When he walked out into the fields, He took a jar of water with him.
By The Sea
by John Michael Mouskos “I hear Gordon’s been painting; He must be feeling better in himself.” “No, Gordon’s busy dying; The cancer’s spread.
Draught
by Julie Rogers The sun, a coin flipping deep in a pocket of heat that won’t give. Newscast: governor’s gruff voice rations water, Sierra
Dropout boogie
by H. D. Brown I saw the tattoo a snake curling around a dagger the type of cliché a good artist can slap on a jarhead between beers I saw it in
Entreaty
by Stephen Petroff Moon and moth, Take us upon the night sky, All but out of reach Of philistines and loathsome politicians, Who hound artists as
eschatology
by Pamela Twining I laughed at Death again today I laughed as only Life can laugh snatched tomorrow from the jaws of the bone collector burning
Finding the Boy
by Stephen Petroff At Night, I am Awakened from dreaming to look through the window — As water is welling, the moon’s eyes
Grief: Another Perspective
by Julie Rogers Sad is a turd you step on more than once, stays deep in the tread, prints the hall floor as you come to meet the people who would
Hen House
by Julie Rogers Hen House for Sangye The mother is never done. Her hands work her heart, play dough shapes. The mold cuts her to size,
Hermaphropoetics / Desire
by Rochelle Owens In this story ripening on the vine so to speak In this story a warhol–like playfulness a vinyl fruit of desire
i sold your car today
by Pamela Twining as i slough off another piece of you i still sometimes wear your skin see through your eyes walk journeys my legs have never
In My Father’s House
by David Cope we walk thru his rooms, sit where he sat, tell stories — the wild ride back from Hana, his teenage self scaling Long’s Peak on the
Last Look
by David Cope the room is silent, empty but for the bier. she lies, sheet draped over her body — she is so small in death
Learning to See
by Oz Hardwick It’s a map of the tracks where angels fell, linking Heaven and Hell; the constellations before they shrank to pinpricks; a
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
by David Cope what became of the girl whose dreams dressed up for Madame Pomponelli’s neighborhood fashion show, the sixth grader who skipped on
Makes Sense
by Florence Weinberger The poet admits it herself, her poem makes no sense, she says it might have started with the death of my salamander, whose
No Place Nowhere
by John Michael Mouskos She said, “There was a knock at the door; The boy had returned, Walking through the night, To be with us once more.”
Red LifeSavers
by James Reidel The cherry ones, So painfully close to the weakest of medicines — Luden’s, Smith Bros., Hall’s, Hardly a saccharide shy of penny
Running Man
by Oz Hardwick Running Man Prague, Warsaw, Leipzig There he is, black–clad, blurred face contorted, chaos in his eyes before the
Sailor Art
by H. D. Brown the scrimshaw scratchings covering grandpa Schmidt weren’t the patterned sailor tattoos that cover these college girls Captain
Sailor Girl
by H. D. Brown Sailor Girl for J. J. He could make them dance the shitty sailor girl tattoos pricked into his forearms over months of
Selective Memory
by Andy Clausen Back in the early nineties on the way to a poetry gig in Humboldt County my car went kaput And I wound up in a motel
Simple Words
by Neeli Cherkovski I keep wading in the mud of the Classic poets, they have a fine morbidity and a clean psychology trust in the epic that ends
somewhere an island : in three parts
by Loie Merritt if listening to music did enough, I would tell it thank you and walk away more slowly if playing the cello were easy, I would
Spring Fog from a Rear Window on Water Street
by James Reidel The inspiration here is too window shopped, But the cat arches against the glass, Getting comfortable after the long winter,
The Girl in the Gown
by George Economou The Girl in the Gown for A. E. Stalling What I learned at a prom, not in a class, dancing in the dark, holding what
The Newly Opened Sky
by Andy Clausen The newly opened sky is full of albatrosses & pigeons they’re letting loose what they’ve used up Because others can’t see the
This is What the Wound Does
by Florence Weinberger You slow you live your life on a molecular level each joule of pain enhanced like nerve endings through the lens of a
Two by Georgios Arkadios
by George Economou Two by Georgios Arkadios I am occasionally visited by this halftavistic persona who has one foot set in the
Untitled
by David Meltzer Ah, ego wants everything all the time & spaces silence or blank page lays splayed apart for whatever words pass as art’s
Untitled 2
by David Meltzer Pops Staples picks Jenny up & holds her in his arms at the Troubador she’s 2 years old unsprung gold hair coils round pink
Spring 2014
A Late Smile
by George Bowering I was born in December, and now I’m in the December of my life. Has anyone seen what next year will be like or whether I’ll
Adam’s Complaint
by Adrian C. Louis I did not need the cooter of Eve. I only wanted His magical love & His dribbling, dark gifts. Oh my God, were you not the
Alia, the Beautiful
by Grace Andreacchi Alia, the Beautiful a poem in three parts 1. Torn Apart the sky is torn apart the stars lie scattered upon the dead
Big Glimmer
by George Bowering The ocean is always evaporating, he says, as if he were Friedrich Nietzsche, human kind is no better, I’ve reached a great age
Bright Landscape
by Xue Di Bright Landscape translated by Waverly and Keith Waldrop In the extension of family he’s called Xue mature child remembered
Buffalo Skinners
by Matthew Caley Having left M’Lady half-naked and panting, as her husband mounted the stairs, I vaulted the balustrade — preferred exit of
Celia
by Xue Di Celia translated by Hil Anderson and Sue Ellen Thompson I see you, with your panther eyes and the body of a lamb among the cut
Close-knit Family
by Gerald Locklin Toad is bragging How his thirteenth grandchild Is due in less than a week, and His eighty-year-old new buddy At the donut
Coma in a boyfriend
by Anselm Berrigan I’ve an invigorated withdrawal In nurture posing as signatory To certain accounts — can they And do they. Canned they &
Do Not Feed the Pigeons
by George Chopping Do Not Feed the Pigeons Based on a true story from 1997, when studying at Catering College in Torquay, Devon Back
Erotic Haiku
by Vanessa Vie Whilst autumnal night Interlocks our drowsing flesh Know we want more night.
First Love
by Xue Di First Love translated by Wang Ping and Keith Waldrop Calling ceaselessly your name in order to feel how I was caught and plunged
For All the Good It Did Us
by Jim Daniels I smiled at the gate of Lord Larry, the Boy with the Swimming Pool. The small plastic / rubber / aluminum circle stand-in for Ye
For Practice
by Anselm Berrigan temporary ruins to collaborate with stream of food trucks & foot traffic around a corner twenty million rats send their
Frigidity as an Act of Love
by Vanessa Vie Because of my blood Take me from behind and pray From my fours I glimpse.
His Wife and Girlfriend . . .
by Gerald Locklin Are the confidantes he would most like To take conversational refuge From each other with, But he’s learned each wants to hear
Hollocene
by Anselm Berrigan How are we doing notationally speaking? We are feeling conspicuous No amount of crypto-hasho forear / blackbear fiddling will
II .1 . iii — Empires of vapour
by Michael Boughn Among Dupont’s tattered wounds, commerce’s ragged edge, sudden curve of attention shaped to cocked hip draped in thought.
Independence
by Stephen Ellis Spontaneous beauty like ancient folk songs drift down from the far north, like the light rain that cools the genius living in
Joy
by Stephen Ellis There’s a red glow, moving west from China, and now the last moments at the luminous horizon, as dusk settles in, with its gold
My Fine, Feathered Corpse
by Adrian C. Louis I flapped my wings, hoping to rise & not take a nosedive. I was old & grieving but still driven by the need for nooky.
New Year
by Xue Di New Year translated by Hil Anderson and Keith Waldrop Snow covers former days Children hide in the snow while three squirrels
No consolation!
by Natasha Georgievska We are too young to die like that Quiet and peaceful We rather bleed on the tavern floor With wine on lips and knives
Oz
by Anne Elezabeth Pluto From across the window the wind rises dust, birds, debris cyclone forward away as shadow from me to you this separation
Pigeon’s Comeuppance
by George Chopping Eventually back on board the boat to an angry cat and a cold dead fire. But better that, than an angry fire and vice versa.
Seven Years
by Xue Di Seven Years translated by Waverly and Keith Waldrop Walking on broken glass, living in a city whose dialect I don’t speak Feet
Song of Mayakovsky’s Dogs
by Vanessa Vie Seasons seasons poet-seasons Sea daughters sea sons People roaming the streets in a cold February wind I miss the Revolution bare
Song of the Firebird
by Vanessa Vie Song of the Firebird to M.H. I fell in Love with a bird I am in Love with a Firebird “Put your colours against the sky
Stars like sentinels stand by
by Oz Hardwick The moon is heavy tonight, plump and livid, barely clearing the black ground. Blind and bloodshot, it eyes nothing.
The Confluence of the Elbe and The Upa
by Matthew Caley Supposedly, the cool silver birch bole barely two hips width shudders like a woman on the brink of believing in her man They are
The Emeriti
by Gerald Locklin When Toad goes for his morning coffee and Raisin-bran cookies at the Donut Shoppe, His wife asks, “Off to hang out With your
The Hammock
by Matthew Caley “What wind so blew that a hammock netted a man?” Anon. Two silver birches bear the burden, which after all is only some
Throw-away toughness
by Anselm Berrigan I no longer wish To contribute to The communal anxiety The practitioners of no Two-something and six Let me see your scrapes
Valentine to a Four Corners Girl
by Adrian C. Louis Moth-shaped leaves bang again & again against the basement window. Snow-filled winds curse against my rented house at
Winter 2014
2 a.m. in the Grand Hotel Leveque
by Danny Caine 44 screams each other in a language. 45 awakes naked and cannot asleep again. 42 reaches to phone neuf un un then hand retreats.
A Letter to Bruno: Seven Years Since He Left
by Peter Krok A Letter to Bruno: Seven Years Since He Left Blaise Pascal: “The heart has its reasons . . . ” It has been seven years since you
Aftermath
by Helene Swarts Like orphans dreaming mothers out of their soup Like the pauper’s mouth moving when the rich man swallows We expect the moon.
And Now Let Us Go Into The Garden
by Helene Swarts Light, like spilled milk, spreads near our feet making little circles. Soon the moon will bring another cast. Come, let us go
Ars Poetica
by Howard Winn To the right of me loom neo-formalists, rigor in their cheeks, cash behind their checks, anthologies in their bank accounts,
Begin Again
by Leonore Hildebrandt To discern layers of sound and scent begin again to focus sink and strike begin to rise into the rising begin in silence.
Cartography in Retrospect
by Mike Bove Roads to nowhere, rivers flowing back into hills: I can think of several wrong ways to draw a map. All it takes is one slack stride
Crepuscular
by Joshua Sullivan The drainage ditch leads down to the pond, forming the boundary of the fallow flood plain. Paul’s farm, his father’s before
Crepuscule
by Sydney Lea There’s a man with two bearded collies: on his drive back home from an office, the widower passes the three at 5:30. When winter
Dumping the Old Windows
by Mark DeFoe I heaved them in the reeking pile, but they did not break. The vision of that old world was not so brittle, though warped to be
Elephant
by Karina Borowicz In a clearing at the edge of the forested hillside a boulder is crouched. A mother elephant and we her children. We find her
Evelyn
by Karina Borowicz Our neighbor, she of the white hair smoothed in a French twist. She of flowering dresses and earrings of mute pearl. Hands
Five Picture Postcards
by S Stephanie Five Picture Postcards for W.E.B. — after Radnóti I August 1944 In the flint colored mountains of Bulgaria two weeks before your
Her Secret
by Wesley McNair Why Thurman must cover every counter top, table and chair with his things, Wilma no longer asks, knowing he will only answer as
How a photographer landed on the valet at L’Opera
by Roger Camp How a photographer landed on the valet at L’Opera for Len Matsuk I was told by someone who was standing in line valet ticket
I Love You Detroit
by Danny Caine I Love You Detroit for Dan Gilbert I love you Detroit People Mover because you don’t give a fuck you just give rides to
Insouciant
by Sydney Lea Insouciant after the Newtown massacre After school treat, reads a certain crossword clue. For an instant I’m dizzy with rage at
James Wright’s Horses
by W. E. Butts There are certain words that transport us out of those small spaces we sometimes live in: prognosis, cancer, treatment, memory
Learning Williams
W. E. Butts Learning Williams for Kevin Cahill What did I really learn that quiet afternoon in a classroom of students, heads on their desks, or
Marlin Strike
by Paul Pines He breaks the surface a splinter of buried light tail-walks the water dives back runs/ tugs/ stops/ circles/ approaches runs
Micah Weeping, 1983
by Sydney Lea Three decades ago, even the Vietnam War Seemed gone for most of us. On Memorial Day, Or Decoration, as our small town’s elders
Old Man Pan
by Paul Pines We anchor close to Peter Pulitzer on his reconditioned Louisiana shrimp trawler The Sea Hunter a man who marries girls that leave
Prodigal
by Mimi White The eternal route past the lake where you learned to swim as a child where you fished with your brothers for hornpout whose whisker
Punishing Snows
by Karina Borowicz When the punishing snows came, mother would stand with her hands outstretched and filled with crumbs for the sparrows. How
Rain Dance
by Mimi White Would like to sing, but the sea ran across the road. People are eating, others driving in the rain. Tomorrow the news, but today
Ramshackle
by Dick Allen black–eyed Susans in a tin cup over a grimy porcelain wood–burning kitchen stove beside the washing machine in my
Side by Side
by Mark DeFoe In decency and calm our homes repose. Flowers bless our summer. Each fall we rake. When the snow comes we heave the snow aside So
Sitting on an Old Stone Fence, Looking into the Distance
by Dick Allen Far away, there’s what might be a windmill or a silo, or just a trick of the eye, and are those eye specks or crows floating out
Sitting on an Old Stone Fence, Looking into the Distance
by Dick Allen Far away, there’s what might be a windmill or a silo, or just a trick of the eye, and are those eye specks or crows floating out
The Anxiety of Influence
by John F. Buckley Nobody’s parents have loved him enough, and everyone’s mommy has struggled with cancer, and anyone’s daddy’s addicted to
The Lost Cause
by Mark DeFoe In some jungle, waiting. What we feared may be amongst us. We sniff the wind. We hang on each change of intonation. We
Three Lunulae
by Raymond Hall A soul, the Universe, awakens awestruck looking around Interprets further, gags I watched a Spider spin a web, patiently Wait.
Through the Keyhole
by Mimi White Amazed a tree could grow in the sky, shoots about to burst, supple, tender. Sleep had sealed lost prayers, sibilant, forgotten
War
by Helene Swarts Light no longer colors the leaves, blending green into grace. Evil, as unremarkable as ever, silts over the streams. Children
Wisteria
by Dick Allen The French, I read somewhere, think cellar door most beautiful English. My father’s cellar door was ugly,
Zig-Zag
by Dick Allen When you’re being shot at, it’s best to run in an almost zig–zag pattern, varying a little depending on the time of day, the
Fall 2013
Arthur Rimbaud’s Poem About America
by John McKernan The menagerie of sunset erodes the stars Cans of tuna squid abalone in morphine Rise before dawn like a god with a machete
Birth
by Blanca Castellón In the midst of today’s death a poem was born alone so alone its cactus body stores water for days of thirst. Translated by
Bloom Day
by Ron Salutsky My friend the heroin addict & recovering Catholic used to cross herself after she tied off and when the redluscious
Competitive Decadence
by Mark Terrill Between these meridians where pastoral alchemy is loosened on tough afternoons these attributes of tension and release
Corridor
by Petar Matovic The paths spread out like a sediment from an overturned cup of coffee, chaotic visions. Automobiles in the rush hour: the sudden
crocodile days
by Patrick Doyle Over the last few days I’ve felt like I have a crocodile on my body, all jade colored and sparkling like a beautiful
Curtains
by Petar Matovic for J. Hristic In the night, if you go out to the balcony, you will not see the stars you will not see anything. Because
Dark Matters
by John J. Ronan In a universe of unidentified dark Matter, no wonder you wake, Anxious in the a.m.’s Bleak bedroom, Roof exploded and you
Days of Tempest
by Sergio Badilla Castillo Wang Wei is confused. What disturbance makes him think of Li Yuan? Does the storm like a rat gnaw Tang Dynasty from
Dead-Dog Grief
by Nancy Jean Hill Consider, if you will, a middle–aged man scattering ashes into a wicked winter sea while his wife stays in their marital
Down to Earth
by Leigh Donaldson Her face is contorted with love, dry, brown, cracked like coffee grains left too long in A red clay cup; cradling the dregs of
Eating People
by Jefferson Navicky I’m eating leftover people. They taste worse than I thought because they sold the company just before I ate them. I used to
End Song
by Sergio Badilla Castillo Something made Vallejo afraid in public places, on the side streets adjoining the Jardin de Luxembourg / in ’20s Paris
existential love seat
by Patrick Doyle hunting in the trees of Maine in 1969, a psychedelic phenomenon would launch itself like a pinetree version of NASA: a curious
Fashionista
by Marcia F. Brown Too brown for winter and brittle as a wishbone, she marches through the store in ostrich boots, stilettos spiked enough to
Figment Three
by Gerald George He just kept buying them in antique stores, the old framed photoed faces with no names on the back, so many displaced
Figment Two
by Gerald George After old Archibald put in an espresso machine, all the poets in town sat in Archibald’s Grocery and Gas drinking espresso and
Firehouse
by Leigh Donaldson The silent group sits in front of a building made of brick and mortar that houses shiny, red, toy–like trucks. They
Flown-over and over
by Dan Alter wasn’t I the one who put on collars, dry cleaned, and walked leafy in the commuter crowd trembling like bible pages, and didn’t you
From B. to B.
by Blanca Castellón ( When I lose myself ) Dear Blanca I haven’t seen you of late you’ve been insubstantial ethereal transparent and all those
last time I checked I was still alive
by Patrick Doyle loving you one hundred years ago was like the last living moment of a piece of birch before it gets put on another log to get
Lewis Carroll’s Corpse Poem
by John McKernan Your coffin is ready Sir Packed full of air It will weigh As much as ten million needles Sir Admit it to the grooves in
Light, Something Forthcoming
by Marko Pogacar Like half of a peach in its southern sweetness. like raspberries, like peas. a cow mooing out of the white alliance of bones.
Lobby
by Sergio Badilla Castillo In Avellaneda Pizarnik surprises me with a look of devastation wrought by the sullen city’s shadows. Each of us has
March
by David Cope white dawnlight thru my windows, thru fronds of cycad & spathphylum — fierce light after months of storm & sigh, turning
Maternità
by Victoria Surliuga A woman: dressed in black, sitting on a rock, exhausted from the heat, counts the grains of sand fallen from her lap. She
Officer Johnson
by Jefferson Navicky Inspired by Harper’s Magazine, March 2013 On the night of 23 March, I was summoned to 9 Berkeley Place, the home of Mr.
Open-Heart Burglary
by Mark Terrill In the postbellum antechamber of an old boatyard in Dithmarschen I brush the dust off a book and read how the ancient Chinese
pfeiffer park, big sur
by Patrick Doyle the three of us trampled down pfeiffer park, big sur and commented about the arid dust on the trees & shrubbery. an antique
Recite
by Myronn Hardy But I thought this was love. The beginning ending the sugar maples’ first leaves. The becoming of someone else more at
Sleeping Through It
by Jeffrey Thomson When the tree came down across the fence in the night and blustered its barky limbs across the lawn, missing our bed and room
Star Trek Episode
by Sara Toruño-Conley Another trip along the penny’s edge dropped into the pool: swallowed water, we, bags of water. Try this. When they take you
Storm over Michigan Avenue, Midnight Market Dreams
by David Cope unspoken sorrow of upturned faces, crowds on Michigan Avenue scurrying, whispering their quick talk staving off the night —
teens
by Patrick Doyle we cackled on the playground of eternity, while the see–saw of reality launched our feet closer to the stars, and then it
The Allegory of Time
by Mark Terrill The broken mirror above the cracked sink in the cheap hotel room in the ancient harbor on the other side of the island seems to
The True Self
by Carl Dennis You have to keep alert if you want to distinguish Between a man giving by nature And a man selfish by nature Who’d like to become
the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you
by Patrick Doyle the reason for the trials and tribulations of Jesus Christ are not because of anything that has been told. the truth is Jesus
Thinking of Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter
by Sergio Badilla Castillo My nickname is conspicuous here in Munich’s bohemian quarter among orthodox Jews and immigrants from the East. In the
Thrush
by J. B. Sisson The day my wife’s due back from a long trip, I’ve stumbled on the soft corpse of a thrush beside the morning paper at the door.
Thunder Lot
by Petar Matovic The asphalt lane of the street has kicked out the television picture, now these dimensions are mixed. Silicon pollen
Tides
by Michael Estabrook So Dad didn’t die when he was only 36 Dr. Zullo gave him an experimental drug that rolled the stomach cancer back out to sea
Time
by Myronn Hardy But this is for a time. A time that slides down branches. A time seen in mirrors as a trapezoid of light in constant tremor. A
To My Neighbors (This Morning My Flesh is a Lowered Flag)
by Marko Pogacar Honey melts in tea, completely, unlike you with serious music, and unlike me in you, the tense wire of the never–ending
To The Gardener
by Marko Pogacar Rosehips in garden beds, no–one expresses opinions, figs, dried and fresh, both hollowed out with beaks, overhead an
Tomatoes, summer’s first
by Dan Alter and this one is for Michigan, for her latticed rivers, for her fireflies tickering the dark which is made of muslin, which cloaks
Uncle Barber
by Jefferson Navicky My uncle is a barber. He cuts hair with a pair of chopsticks. People don’t know the difference. It’s like he’s tossing a
Vademecum
by Blanca Castellón “To be, or not to be: that is the question” — W. S. To be a poet the main thing is to be a poet no matter if you wear a
Watching The Station Agent in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Republic of Costa Rica
by Ron Salutsky The dwarf came to on the train tracks after a night of heavy drinking following the part where everything quiets down and two
When We Read
by Ivana Rogar Poems are souls on paper, Covering pages like snow, Mile after mile. Reading them we walk the poet’s paths And the paths become
Witness Tree
by Marcia F. Brown On the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, historians call them “Witness Trees” . . . Last week, Park officials
You Pond
by Patrick Doyle yr freckles are like triumphant little sunburns of beauty. every one of them is a lilypad on the pond of your soul. my swarm of
Zeno In Love
by Alessandro Carrera Take the act of grasping for example. It is a gesture the enclosure of the soul does not explain. No desire arises that
Summer 2013
A Man, for Michael Macklin
by Naomi Shihab Nye A man comes home carrying a pineapple. His family and friends gather ’round him happily. No pineapple has entered this house
A Wrench
by Megan Grumbling appears between our weekly beers one afternoon. It’s small, but has some weight to it — cast iron, solid, and as plain as our
All Night Long
by Ralph Angel All night long the moon is wandering behind the clouds and upon the water. All night the flickering in shop windows across an
Anima Mundi
by Thomas D. Absher Before paper, medieval writers wrote on animal skins: cattle, sheep, and goats for parchment; vellum from calves, prized for
Another Poem for Michael Macklin
by Roger Dutton his silver hair thrown by the wind in his whistle, an ambassador of poetry & good will &
At Sea
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc Keel I built under me, sunk deep so as not to tip or flip or let salt water rush through galley then
Below Zero
by Michael Macklin Here in the deep of winter so frigid that the starlight crackles sleepers dream of woolen blankets wrapping around their
Book Mobile for Michael Macklin
by Anne Britting Oleson Who else would drive by, holding that cigarette out the window of a pick–up which had seen better days years ago —
Carpenter/Poet at the Gate for Michael Macklin, Poetry Editor
by Gerard Grealish I imagine you inviting strangers into the fold, finding in the cut of their words a grain that draws you in, knots burned from
Dream House
by Michael Macklin Early the light filters through pines and oaks reaches between raw studs to lay bars of shadow on the sub –floor. In my
Elegy for a Craftsman
by John W. Hoy The time is right To take some stock — To measure and assess stores of Life’s dust mites: bent tacks, plies of veneer, Old corks,
Elegy for Michael and the Sea, after Lost Uncle by Michael Macklin
by Melissa Crowe Uncle, today there is nothing to say but yes, to my new city, cupped in its sequence of palms — purple, periwinkle, watery blue,
Elegy for Michael Macklin
by Nadell Fishman The loons on East Long Pond went silent this morning; it’s a gray day and the chill that rolled in from Canada last night has
Elegy With Spiders for Michael Macklin
by Betsy Sholl Six months after you died, spiders fill the field, gleaming in early sun, having spun all night their bright God’s – eyes,
Four
by Baron Wormser On Chandler Street in Baltimore a brick house With a sectioned cement sidewalk, a maple tree, A privet hedge, a rusting swing
How we become oceans and starlight
by Michael Macklin The way rain slowly erodes stone by washing and caressing its faces, my hope is that time moves over us polishing our hearts
Image on Ice
by Michael Macklin At the hard edge of dark water you can catch an glimpse of yourself reflected on the growing ice all frozen waves and ripples
Island
by Michael Macklin We sit in conversation the world around us recedes until all that is left is the sound of our voices filled with murmurs as
Lost Uncle
by Michael Macklin So maybe I was the one your mother never mentioned or your father who was still healing after I ran over his knees with my
Lovely for Michael Macklin
by Betsy Sholl Bird flash too quick — to sketch it I’d have to rush the line, long dash like wind riffling the paper I am almost out of,
Man On Raft
by Wayne Atherton He sailed upon his raft of words into the mystery of himself and lived by them
Ode to Les
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc Seventy –six, two new hips, skates that look pulled off a museum shelf. He plays with guys half his age, plus a few a
Prayer for Michael
by Catherine Fisher now that you’re not here anymore that we can see we can see you were both here and there all along. belonging to everyone as
Quicksilver In Memory of Michael Macklin
by Kathleen Sullivan Do you find yourself watching now for stubborn crows, penny nails, limpet shells, the dimpled light on an orange? Now can
Sestina for Fruitsellers
by Michael Macklin 1. She comes to me with a knife in one hand and an orange in the other to ask about its sweetness how to reach the seeds, peel
Shadows in The Half-Light for Michael
by Steve Luttrell Wishes for water — ashes for the wind — memories with the passing and distance from light. Your poems now recede, becoming
Sing it in the Shower Villanelle, apologies to Sly and the Family Stone
by Tim Seibles Time is passing, I grow older, things are happening fast This thing I do — the tongue I use — does give me some relief All I have
Sparrow Song for Michael
by Martin Steingesser Hardly a breeze of air. The small birds fall silent in the trees. Simply wait: soon
Standing Beside You, for Michael
by Marita O’Neill Rolling expanse of prairies, Midwest vowels, wide and flat, lumbered always through your voice, your gait, the round stone of
Sunday over France
by Michael Macklin In 1926 the flight from Paris to New York was seventeen hours. Passengers sat in graceful wicker trying to converse above the
The Feather
by Thomas D. Absher Do not make the mistake of studying alchemy before you have studied the one feather left in your yard by a raven, maybe left
The First Four Life Sentences for Michael Macklin
by Stephen Petroff “the melody is memory itself ” I lay for the night on the yellow roadside, in a deep field of curving gourds, across from
The Sound I Am After
by Molly McGrath A great blue heron flies out between earth and sky. Slow, deep wing beats send him down river to me. He arrived before us And
The Wandering Poets
by Philip Levine As they return from their pilgrimage, footsore and disgusted, only a few wear jackets and ties. As usual Gerald is the most
Time being what it is for Michael Macklin
by Erika Butler “I won’t be able to come this weekend, but I’ll see you next time,” you wrote. “It’s for a good cause, though. We’ll miss you —
To Embrace the Winter Moon
by Michael Macklin Ascension begins like this, walking into the falling snow each flake lifts us with its gentle kiss. Imperceptible as the
Waiting for Michael and Murphy
by Steve Luttrell In the story there is a blue truck parked at the curb. Empty, except for a large yellow dog — head resting atop the
What Remains
by Kevin Sweeney “What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee” Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos, LXXXI It’s
What We Are Here For
by Michael Macklin For you, it is a chance to learn about the little people scurrying through the dark halls of computers, filing fingers to the
Spring 2013
A Romance
by Rich Ives I shall chase flies across the room which shall be known as forever and I shall place forever in a box and close it and hide the box
Architecture
by Robbie Sugg I live in a concrete monolith cells divided by sheetrock plaster plateglass plastic
Art Thief
by Lee Sharkey Who can explain this ? We know who the agent is, but who is his agent ? What path did he walk to the vanishing point ? What
Artaud in Mexico
by John Macker He tells the dubious Tarahumara Rimbaud never met a French poet he didn’t disdain. Eats peyote by the handful from a painted
Cafe Talk with the Late Robert Desnos
by Elton Glaser Nobody tells you how boring the dead are. They never buy me booze or listen to my talk. Ah, how I loved talking from the black
Cash
by Robert Herschbach It can stink like old shoes, curl at the edges, be a face gone ragged and creased. It’s still tender. A machine may not take
Cold Knowing
by Richard Taylor Water from the well in its corner of our barn and house can straighten a person up pink and suddenly with cold astringent
Coming to Mr. Kirk
by Richard Taylor Before the crowd arrives I’ll find shelter among the thick trees and stand very still. The noise of them, the noise bends the
Deposition
by Lee Sharkey What I know is that there is a mural. Was a mural. What I heard was that there was a fax. Or a letter. What I read was that the
Devotional Smoke
by Elton Glaser I’m praying again To a God I don’t believe in. I’m lighting candles like little spaceships That will carry my pleas and
Dirty Face, Cripple & Wild for Bob Creeley *
by Peter F. Murphy The first used to chew & never wipe his chin. The second shot his leg about off going over a fence. The third drank a lot
Eternal Water
by Celina Villagarcia I want to birth one hundred children a river full of bearing — arms waving in welcome eyes closed
Face to Face
by David Wagoner At the outer corners of the eyes, the skin has come to points like directional indicators, and at the inner curves of the nose,
For Paul
by Celina Villagarcia In a hundred years your fingers too frail to braid with mine legs too burdened by time’s hand to walk
For Ted Berrigan
by John Macker Your “code of the west” is not the same as mine. You are all Manhattan via Oklahoma party Pepsi cowboy true rumbling gut on the
Haphazards
by Elton Glaser 1 Tendrils of rain Catch on the dry leaves and drag them Down to green again. I don’t need sharp light in the grass, Quills and
if this is all there is it better be enough
by Robert Roley there’s the war it seems it’s endless dreams crouching before the fire withered gray in
Lisa, Dancing
by Robert Herschbach Taller than the men who chased the crescent moons that fell from the strobe, you made the dim club worth its cover charge,
Lumen
by Susan H. Maurer She had to kiss the floor they were so strict. She once wore coif, grey wool, whalebone corset stays cheap cotton slips,
Microcosm
by Nick Squadere SHINKICHI TAKAHASHI said that rivers & mountains exist within a single tuberous
Mid-Century Ranch, Orange County
by Trina Gaynon I cannot tell you what a bargain this is. . . . — “$7,500” Josephine Miles
North of Us
by Nicholas Spengler When everything has left us but the long bone of birch against the blackest sky When all has gone but the blood heat of you
Observing Glen Park
by Robbie Sugg Clouds diffuse over the canyon, plank houses rise on stilts to meet the rice paper sky. The age old
Other People’s Dreams
by Nicholas Spengler In a town named for sleep, cradled in high rock, there’s an ancient church whose bells toss and turn at hazy intervals; a
Passing Through the Heart from: San José Song
by Robbie Sugg Passing through the heart of town, the swollen Guadalupe River Simply breathing this wet air, I am stoned beyond description
Plum Island Suite
by David Stankiewicz I At twenty–two all you need’s an old car music and books enough job to pay the rent a broken heart (optional)
Random Afternoon / Late November
by Nick Squadere There is a strange / quiet — l o n e l i n e s s : not a single person home at my cousin’s house
Riddle Poem
by Susan H. Maurer The small black angels light on the telephone wire. Disappointingly, as they neither glitter nor shine, though the starlings
stranded fast upon these shores as twilight deepens
by Robert Roley stymied before icons of the virtual the news all apocalypse colorado burning words
Suburbia
by Donald Crane As I was trimming around my rose bushes, I glanced over the hedge And saw my neighbor’s wife on her chaise longue
thank you for this
by Celina Villagarcia pressed against the backs of eyes, tears offer the slightest fire on room–warm arms warmth
the glove box poet
by Robert Roley gone downtown heard some old geezer gassin’ they can’t take nothin’ from you once you’re skint
The Levee
by Peter F. Murphy At eleven meters, the river lingers. Waves laugh to Liszt. On the pavement, children play tag. Lovers long for sofas hugged in
The Paintress for Sam
by Nick Squadere But what could be more brilliant than the index finger behind your
Unwritten
by Suzannah Gilman I am willing to let you be my undoing, to undo all I learned before you came to me. I will forget just as each labor’s pains
Voyage VII
by Peter F. Murphy Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried . . .
Your Voice in Half-Light
by Nicholas Spengler At the interior window you can hear two kinds of birds: those within cages and those without. The former sing all day over
Winter 2013
“what is poetry?”
by Ulrike Draesner translated from German by Iain Galbraith cleaning vacuuming wiping runny noses a scraped knee stroking tummy to put
After a Stroke, My Mother Speaks to a Stuffed Pheasant in Her Son-in-Law’s Living Room
by Tom Daley Pheasant, I promised my sons I will only leave them to climb the hill to the long sleep if you dare to fan your wings in this room.
All the Miracles
by Sarah Wetzel Please St. Anthony, whether he’s dead or alive, whatever the outcome, please, let them find him by nightfall, said a weeping
altar inclinations
by Ron Winkler translated from German by Jake Schneider the way I knew you, as a chant from naked fragrant June and the way you could
at a water neither river nor pond
by Ron Winkler translated from German by Jake Schneider wind forces flagellations on the trees — a suffering grasped out of thin air.
at island 35 for A. P.
by Ron Winkler translated from German by Jake Schneider the sea is flawlessly whipped up. it earned a more unsettling designation.
At the End of the Day
by Bill Brown God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. — Paul Valery My neighbor stirs around
ball-lightning, hammond organ
by Ulrike Draesner translated from German by Iain Galbraith but didn’t she but didn’t she die but didn’t she revive and was therefore
brandenburg
by Ulrike Almut Sandig translated from German by Bradley Schmidt all routes leading here were quick and blue. on signs were warnings of
COLOR
by Ulrike Almut Sandig translated from German by Bradley Schmidt * shoot a PICTURE: my clothes are blue. forget me not. this flower is
Explaining Efflorescence
by Nina Bennett The chemist: Water seeps through the brick, dissolves salts, evaporates, leaves a white crystalline deposit on the surface. The
Family Cemetery
by Bill Edmondson A clash of whirling galaxies Utter their light through the black of the brain Of a man standing among bones and dust In a weedy
from the plane you see
by Ulrike Almut Sandig translated from German by Bradley Schmidt by day the smart bluescreen of pools in one thousand and one gardens
Glimpse to Marlene, September 2011
by David Filer The slough is finally calm, and in the last light, the palisades are doubled, white mist dissipating twice. I was afraid for us
Grief
by Daniel Lusk Now it is happening in the past: my brother is gone and I did nothing to stop him. Rain and snowmelt washed out the lane and I did
Imminent Tribulations
by Kevin Sweeney My pal David had the shits last night and doesn’t drive so I took him to the dentist, past the Congregational church on Woodford
Knockout
by Kevin Sweeney I felt she was cheating on me that afternoon in front of Melman’s Market. I was a limp 14. The boy holding her hand looked 17.
Meditation: March 7
by Daniel Lusk Where the pond will rise as deep snow ebbs slow–wise, brilliant light on oak and hemlock shadows fading paw prints. I could
My Fiancé
by Kevin Sweeney She sat on the right, was willing to answer questions which, nights in July, met silence from others, gave me an enthusiastic Hi
naked apes
by Judith Zander translated from German by Bradley Schmidt at least the animals loved our hedging talk grated geckoes good for coughs
Normal, Illinois
by Richard Spilman Because home is the one place you cannot escape; because it sat in the middle of the county, in the middle of the
Poem in Late April
by Angela Patten Just before The Great Disappointment when the Elect could still believe they had been singled out for salvation Just before the
Prodigal Moon
by Daniel Lusk More April cruelty: a friend denied tenure, aunt learns of bone cancer, brother suddenly gone. Budding spirea shattered, peonies
Some Winter Poems
by Daniel Lusk 1 Little blue finch has died. I should have known she’d not withstand cold in her cage alone. I buried her under the apple tree by
Sweeney’s Nest
by Philip Arnold An Irish King of Connaught, Sweeney was cursed and made to think he was a bird. How I skimmed the battered
The Friends I Loved and Left Behind after Elizabeth Bishop
by Mariela Griffor A farewell to a dear friend is never enough. We must bring him flowers, songs with spinning words and good wishes. We must
The Sadness of Hats
by Richard Spilman He had been taught like many men his age not to look at himself, even in mirrors. Shaving saw only what he had to. So it was
The Secret, Painting by William Bouguereau
by Polly Giantonio Her shoulder, soft and full as a swan’s breast, illumines homely features in graceful symmetry — ivory beauty with reticent
There Used To Be Gentlemen
by Maria DiLorenzo who handled their women like art in a museum, forbidden to touch, yet sometimes slyly touched, my grandfather in 1945 kissing
Third Version
by Sarah Wetzel The rain leaves fingerprints in last summer’s dust of the window, while just off shore, anchored and waiting, the barge that will
through the woods, the nested stalks
by Ulrike Draesner translated from German by Iain Galbraith the trunks, chopped, logged (brandenburg wood) the soft firs laid on long
whatever happens
by Judith Zander translated from German by Bradley Schmidt february at the latest daily leafing through the orchid calender in the
Wildfire Season for Jane
by Angela Patten I see you on the concrete streets of East Liverpool, Ohio that industrial Crockery City where you were born. Your red hair like
x-referential field portrait
by Ron Winkler translated from German by Jake Schneider so these cows, right, were parading around like absurd typewriters. for that
Fall 2012
“You Go to War with the Army You Have”
by Joanne Kyger “The froth of rapid associations” is entirely in the mind This
A Novel
by James Koller Suddenly, up from her bed, she crossed the moonlit room, her white skin silver, he thought, in that light. What is it? he asked,
A Song For Your Heart To Sing
by Bertie Koller work your whole life for just one thing make it a song for your heart to sing you don’t need money & you don’t need god you
After Coleridge
by Duncan McNaughton Collingwood had nothing better to do than listen to this guy who was talking in a type of Chinese, saying, I love to think
Ain’t Life Grand?
by Carl Clay Caulkins Papa lies under the willow and Mama lies over the sea My jack knife lies under my pillow keeping me company Easy
Allen Ginsberg andava ai Gat di Calcutta, Allen Ginsberg was going to the Gat of Calcutta
by Dianella Bardelli Allen Ginsberg andava ai Gat di Calcutta dove la gente arrivava morta e veniva bruciata su grandi pire — ci andava per
Almost All She Wrote
by Carl Clay Caulkins Fare thee well, Oklahoma Buick, take me west I’m blinded by the sun And just like Jesse when he was on the
And Then
by Alessandro Spinazzi I like things things about life making a way rolling among menacing obstacles to land at a plate a glass a pillow and then
Beside Myself
by Ava Darling She lies on her back, beside him in the wide bed, one of her hands touching one of his. It is her hand that touches his hand. The
By Duncan McNaughton
Something Empedokles said, when he was saying there’s a difference
By Franco Beltrametti
translated by Stefan Hyner Behind the village garden of paradise metal bucket painted in blue for the water from the
By Franco Beltrametti 2
translated by Stefan Hyner On a truck from Heraklion eating little bananas to suppress the tooth ache in the back pack a blanket a knife a wind
Caught In The Lights
by Bertie Koller in loose fitting dreams by the light of the moon silver sharp & still he nurses his wounds cold fingers work quickly on the
Cielo, Sky
by Dianella Bardelli guardando il cielo immenso di nubi psichedeliche senti con angoscia e meraviglia, con attrazione, che nulla davvero esiste
Early Breakfast with Mourning Dove
by Joanne Kyger See what happens when you waddle around beneath the bird seed table waiting for a hand out You’ve
Easy Street
by Carl Clay Caulkins On a Sunday I came back to my one room country shack It was late afternoon in early Spring You sat there on the
Eyes
by Alessandro Spinazzi Early morning walking the dog rain it’s giving us a break for once a car stops “where’s the medical center?” an old woman
Felez Año Nuevo
by Duncan McNaughton Were you there the night the dogs barked in Banja Luka? I was, with a one–armed Irish nurse and her spinster sister
Filming
by Alessandro Spinazzi Driving around that little bit of pain that’s just right unrolling film sequence after sequence this side and that of the
Five Homes in Six Months
by Franco Beltrametti translated by Stefan Hyner I Five homes in six months When I was living at the Bellevue In Fall Streetcars and hurried
for Andre
by Franco Beltrametti translated by Stefan Hyner In Tanger on the highest terrace one drinks green tea and smokes by sunlight in harsh
Hand In Hand
by Duncan McNaughton Carlisle, the tailor, though otherwise a clumsy man, sat taking his ale and a helping of rhubarb–serviceberry pie. The
Hold Me Like
by Bertie Koller grey skies & no wind at all the table set for two a candle burns at both ends amber rose & blue hold me like the puddle
I took him to my hotel room
by Betta Rouse and we undressed. I was all over the man. He took to my hips and legs, kissed my toes, my legs, all the way to my pussy, and on
I woke in the night, heard
by Betta Rouse your pleasure, wanted you for myself, wanted your breasts, in my hands, in my face. wanted to mouth your nipples, wanted to hold
In Any Weather
by Bertie Koller I am sorrow waiting for a dream to gather up my pieces & toss them in the stream with curling toes & swirling woes where
It had been raining for weeks.
by Betta Rouse Everything was very wet. The music might have been a 1940’s sound track. We might have been on the coast of Brittany. The
Leaving Town
by James Koller We did all this before. “Every time we saw him,” she recalled, “he was with a
Lenore Kandel, il mio ricordo, visione di te, Lenore Kandel, My memory, my vision of you
by Dianella Bardelli È una commemorazione una messa in tuo onore è una messa una cerimonia c’è un fruscio di gonne di pelle di braccia e qualcuno
Lullaby for Emery
by Bertie Koller sleep dear child child of snow where did you come from where will you go day bright with light night dark with none we have the
by Alessandro Spinazzi Every day i wait for mail from far away messages without words sometimes come to me brought by the wind by a bird by an
News, To Me
by Duncan McNaughton Bunch of riders got together, formed a club, The Bychos, though not as simple as that. At the county jail there were two
Open Arms for Katy, the traveller
by Alessandro Spinazzi Welcoming you back to the emptiness left by your leaving the only place you can still call home i’m afraid.
Right & Wrong for Paul and me, a guilty pair
by Alessandro Spinazzi Don’t worry if your wife doesn’t speak to you anymore and writes down everyday your sins like a shopping list or your kids
Second Dream
by Franco Beltrametti translated by Stefan Hyner Dear Raffaello, the war had started the Roman legions sowed the counter revolution in
So Simple
by Bertie Koller I cannot understand what I cannot believe nor can I change what I will not let be there’s nothing so simple as the circling sun
Sono
by Dianella Bardelli sono l’airone bianco e solitario, e sono il papavero rosso, solo nella campagna — e sono il nido vuoto e sono il grano: dopo
Step by Step for Carlo
by Alessandro Spinazzi In the rainy dark of the evening a film in black and white except for a spectral yellow from the factories walking with
Taiwan High Mountain to Doktor Hyner
by Duncan McNaughton The doctor in spite of something or other, himself I suppose, or the ghosts, we mustn’t forget them we grew up with, not now
The Bath
by Ava Darling One must wait for the bath water to warm and then to cool, first a finger, finally a toe. Now I stand, my feet quite wet, lower
We Are
by Bertie Koller are the people we know the people we’ve always known as through this life & others our spirits are blown or are we all
We Are Falling
by Bertie Koller we are falling to pieces like rain to the ground following our rivers wherever they are bound we are falling in love like tears
Wild Current is Blooming Pink, The Odyssey Found at Random
by Joanne Kyger You are in search of some simple way to find your home but the old gods reach out with their stories and
Wishes for Butch
by Alessandro Spinazzi You have to give up drinking (for a while nothing is forever) not to be sober but to get drunk on morning breeze and have
Summer 2012
A Big Bouquet of Haiku for Joko Dave Haselwood
by Michael McClure THE WING – FACE OF THE LITTLE BROWN MOTH looks up desperately MY MOSS HEAD (tiny red maple leaves, lichens) makes light
A Blue Sunset Sits on an Orange Horizon
by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore They trail their hands in the water Their feet hit the cold hard ground Their faces light up dark corners Their eyes
A New Revolutionary Letter
by Diane di Prima they’re us & we’re starving for water for land for air a place to sleep or they’re our
A Poem for John Wieners Written on His Paper
by Philip Lamantia Who’s the white Lady ? can you answer — I cant make it who’s the white lady ? We walked in yr room talking of the white lady
After Age Seventy – Five
by Roxie Powell Like all the rest of life Seventy five came and went And I went to bed Curiously free of cares and Complexity Next morning, lying
Albert Saijo
by Joanne Kyger When I came back from almost two years traveling to Europe and New York in the late 60’s I found the Summer of Love and the Bay
An Orange Sunset Sits on a Blue Horizon
by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Laughing Buddha sits down with Weeping Sufi and they sing a song together that sets fire to the furniture and makes
As Seen from Provincial Perspectives
by Andrew Hoyem On a summer morn in southern France, Toward the end of June when flowers fade From two months’ brilliance in rising heat, A guest
Bag Dad by the Bay for Harry the H
by John Wieners There’s a little cabin in the sky mister on Fillmore
Blood and Sand
by Jack Spicer It is as if the poem moves Without the poem. I have captured you. Done all my will. Have done with all Emotion. There is
Boobus
by Philip Lamantia Last night Mike told me he believed the stars are alive Today we walk with the yellow haired child Eyes of the auctioneer’s
by David Meltzer
by David Meltzer Ah, ego wants everything all the time & spaces silence or blank page lays splayed apart for whatever words pass as art’s
Charley circa 1961
by Roxie Powell Crystalline child Trying to hot wire Your dreams, Electric throbs Pulse your brain. With surprising grace You fold off a window
Collateral Damage for Joanna McClure
by Charles Plymell The moon is sometimes bathed in night’s full light and the earth is aroused as when a woman bathes turns in her phases
Dorothy
by Andrew Hoyem Looking down over, it must be, Kansas, I see snow, patterns of agriculture, showing through, rectangles with diagonals and
Escapes for Julie Hay, circa April 26, 1986
by Diane di Prima I thought I was teaching Thought I knew some thing Till she came to my door, one baby in a stroller, one toddler held onto
For What Time Stays
by John Wieners All the best poems since The Hotel Wentley Poems. Scheduled for publication Summer 1962. A sample: The fog flung over the fields.
Glenn Todd
by Charles Plymell We’ve seen the trace of tears on dusty Texas cheeks and cliffs of far away Pacific spray eat away timeless
How the Hotel Wentley Poems Undermined My Self-Confidence
by Irving Rosenthal I was visiting Allen Ginsberg one day, and in the midst of our usual light gossip about friends, artists, poets and
Infernal Muses
by Philip Lamantia GO! my calfheaded drone! O sheep faced Ana Stekel turning into dove’s dung, Ana Black Ana Noir over niagra of bureau lips,
Interior Suck of the Night
by Philip Lamantia Narcotic air simple as a a cone spun interior suck of the night
Jet Powered Suicide
by Philip Lamantia Just before landing — eerie sound like metallic gut string of atonal eeeeeh! My first con on the system my
Keep The Beat for MayDay Celebration, City Lights
by Diane di Prima keep it! was François Villon a Beat ? the Minnesingers ? what’s a troubadour ? what about them guys we call the “Wandering
Milton
by John Wieners down at the corner I worked in the variety & Drug store having nothing to do I hung out with kids at the wall in a small
Night Streets Crystal
by Ron Loewinsohn The streets at night Run broad and bright deep into the heart where they take me to myself. The streets at night Are filled
Orders 1
by Andrew Hoyem Start your engine. Get set, go. Push on the accelerator. Step on the brakes. Slow to a stop. Get out of the contraption. Crawl to
Perspective
by Roxie Powell One must put things in perspective One must understand that the gaping Hole in one’s middle Will go away Soon be history. First,
red Fred’s piano
by John Wieners low down and dirty I sit having found the connection Eddy and Taylor to day they reprint Cocteau’s Diary of a cure I am hooked
Remembrance and Ongoing Love for Auerhahn Press
by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore Back in the 60s we were all Buddhists. Well, so it seems. Due to Ginsberg and Kerouac’s pervasive influence, Buddhist
Romantic
by Joanne Kyger You can see little hearts in the branches of Douglas fir trees on the computer screen Just for fun
Sounds Abroad at Lassen
by Dave Haselwood, Joanne Kyger, Donald Guravich The scene: The twilight becoming darkest night, the mysterious spring gushing out of a lava
Stadium
by Andrew Hoyem The super stadium sustains all games. Planted, planked, padded, paved, painted, Territories to be won and winnings counted. The
The Elements
by Diane di Prima EARTH: The Snake Charmer Persimmons remain where the boughs are bare. And the ornamental plum blooms early before the rains.
The Kyoto Journals and Floating California
by Philip Whalen Three haiku and journal entries excerpted from the Philip Whalen Papers, circa 1940–2001, were transcribed and edited by Brian
The Lord’s Last Prayer
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti Our father whose art’s in heaven Hollow be thy name Unless things change Thy kingdom come and gone Thy will will be
Who’s Who
by Roxie Powell Sure, I remember you Like an eclipse or aurora borealis You come when you exist — Yeah, you did a number on me. Sure, I remember
Write Something About Poetics Says Cedar
by Joanne Kyger I dream about a totem pole of poets. Actually it was a poster Andrew Hoyem did for a reading of Bolinas writers in
Your Nearness to Me
by Roxie Powell Your nearness to me is no longer Dependent upon distance I sense you being here Open to my questions Ready to guide me toward My
Zero: The Fool
by Ron Loewinsohn His sky is the same yellow as his boots, which appear to be thin and ill – suited for the craggy heights where he dances
Spring 2012
17 Jasmine
by Neeli Cherkovski in the hills which are prelude to disaster famine, monsoon central planning, but I plant jasmine on your shoulder, and tend
49 th Parallel Blues after Nate Mackey
by Paul Nelson The function of waves is to bring the salvage from shipwrecks. — Ramón Gomez de la Serna
Acequia
by Amalio Madueño can’t I believe it will flow forever all that time since the Conquest running through basalt in the high valley where I stand
Ascenseur Pour L’ Échafaud / Elevator to the Gallows for Robin A. Nicholas
by Jack Foley who writes who writes of the sadness of lovers of the sadness of lovers of their of their loneliness when apart loneliness when
Athinas Street, Athens
by Michael Lee Phillips What was the first question and what was the answer ? That’s what I’d like to know. And how did the answer know That it
Being, Love for J. C.
by Neeli Cherkovski being, love, water, the harbor where we turn, suddenly it envelopes us and there is no turning back, shadows illuminate gated
Bill of Lading
by R.S. Mengert If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world no one will oppose you. Chuang Tzu I started
Cañoncito
by Amalio Madueño all the way from Dulzura and all summer the brush had been thin, dry & for a stretch scorched to black stubble in Arroyo
Checkin’ the Set *
by Gerd Stern there was nothing to forgive then murder impossible to forget drove your express spirit beyond this back beat of no time like no
Dragonfly Resurrection
by Paul Nelson Horse flies are smudges on the air. — Ramón Gomez de la Serna Dragonflies are silent fireworks. Into the
Eleventh Hour
by Kimberly Cloutier Green You were a big, horns – only concert of a man. I was your sapphire – tongued chameleon. Kiss me, kiss me.
Embudo Equinox
by Amalio Madueño first, let there be a soft rain out of the West, let there be a grey light in the bosque and the quiet adobe among alamosa,
Embudo Variations — Winter
by Amalio Madueñ I Two kitchen lemons fused by blue green fuzz; I hold the perfect citrus skin of one least rotten. A distant raven sways aside
Etude: A Soft Seizure
by Jake Berry Spokes of the sun strike the sky deep blue — painful An agitation through pipe smoke scattering the nocturnal eye Fragments of joy
Fiefdom
by Jake Berry A fist around the edges — slurry at the heart Tanks Absalom The garter worn twisted Thieves torn from their barracks and scattered
Gone is Not Forgotten for Bert
by Gerd Stern when you’ve got to go it’s a pisser of a when not just you won’t stay can’t, that is, however will you be going now here, there,
Helpless Observer
by Leah Twitchell As the baby rolled and tumbled Down a full flight of stairs, Slow motion kicked in And what took seconds seemed like years. I
Insomnia, Part II
by Alan Elyshevitz I am solvent, well – ventilated. No one has spurned me. The trees in my window efface the wind. Yet my murmurings catch
Kafka
by Barbara Siegel Carlson Two o’clock on his way home. Sun beats down his neck, so he takes a different route. A pigeon begins to gurgle as
Mais Qu’est-ce Qu’il ya, Dit le Non Dieu. Rien, Toujours Rien But What is It ? Says the Non God. Nothing, Always Nothing.
by Jack Foley A Poem of Xmas Xeer “ . . .. quoi que vous soyez chrétien, juif ou mussulman” pour un qui croit pas (comme moi) c’est pas une
Mantegna
by Neeli Cherkovski consider the blue and the red, take your pain to the hills, do not allow envy or anger into the house, step over the dying
Mephisto 10
by Michael McClure MOUNTAINS OF MATTER MADE OF STARS, and scent of crushed GERANIUM LEAVES, in “the everlasting universe of things” roll through
Mr. Tambo, Mr. Bones the mime wears whiteface
by Jack Foley Is it possible How do you do, Mr. Tambo that the man in blackface Oh, Mr. Bones, in a minstrel show I been having (in addition to
Night
by Etel Adnan Silence is covering memory’s shaken trees. No prohibition can hold back the waves that are none other than childhood’s attempts to
No Love No Hate for Bill Morgan
by Neeli Cherkovski 1 throw the book away let it decompose in the stream throw your pen into a cloud grazing jagged winter peaks as governments
No Space for Me
by R.S. Mengert When I was a boy, I dreamt of being an astronaut. I grew up freakishly large and half blind. No space for me. No floating
Nubians Contemplate Lake Nasser Behind the High Dam at Aswan
by Norbert Hirschhorn They stand on concrete pylons, pinions of steel, imagining landmarks they can no longer see: acacias, date palms, orange
Occupy the Poem
by Neeli Cherkovski occupy the poem on its quiet center and the louder margins take each letter and every word to the limit cross into emptiness
Power of the Pocket Journal
by Paul Nelson Those tiny pocket diaries make the year smaller. — Ramón Gomez de la Serna & a year will
Principle of the Moon
by Amalio Madueño Cold moist feebly shining feminine corporeal passive — the womanly the gentle Sister Bride Mother Spouse confab of beloved
Rats
by Heathcote Williams http://thisfragiletent.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/rat.jpg ?w=497&h=375 Rats are beating us In a competition that We’ve
Rzeszowian Ode
by Ewa Chrusciel I smuggle her hula hoop skirts. Queen of the oven and drawers stuffed with candy. Hysteric who chased us with hunks of bread
So Much Love
by Neeli Cherkovski so much love that I want to hide from love I sit in the garden behind our house on Bernal Hill thinking rose, tree fern
Tanka after Basho
by David Bulbul An outdoor wedding. A summer evening. Dinner. Music. Dancing. And someone’s gorgeous lusty wife. A lusty poet. Trouble.
Three Sisters
by Norbert Hirschhorn work the streets of Leicester Square. One peddles ribbons for your sweetie’s hair, the next hawks roses filched from front
Torches for Michael McClure, sage of the mysteriosos
by Jake Berry The torches of heaven outwit the rage of humans They gather without effort in the deep strata (where the Old Ones are buried) —
Town Clock
by Russell Rowland When the wind is right, I hear the strike of the downtown steeple clock. Though annually uncertain of the date His own Son
translation for calin – andrei mihailescu
by Andrei Codrescu Exile is the most radical form of translation writes Calin – Andrei Mihailescu in “Happy New Fear” an English –
Umm Kulthum
by Jack Foley listening to the astounding listening to the astounding sounds Rendition generates tarab, enchantment sounds of
Violation
by Leah Twitchell She was rearranging the furniture In her parent’s house — As if by changing the shape of the house as it had been then, The
Winter 2012
A Moment Writhing with Revelations
by Clayton Eshleman Being here as an enraptured trap, an entrapture. Nothingness pregnant with the isolational reality of one’s being. In Francis
A Small Glass of Orange Juice
by Ron Padgett on a white tablecloth with light blue legs below in a hotel restaurant in a small town in Poland in 1936 is being contemplated by
Angel
by Ron Padgett Pretty little angel eyes on a dark background follow you into the foreground and then close the moment you feel they are about to
Another ’Nother
by Clark Coolidge My name is Sydney Wallet what time are you dead ? were you taken from life ? I have to go my own way a waffle iron
Ash Blonde Janet’s Planet
by Kenneth Rosen 1. A phantom of green – eyed, ash blonde, pre – Adolescent delight, with suggestively mousey,
Aztec Lullaby
by Ron Padgett Humming in the dark from a throat that has just swallowed a hummingbird
catch as catch for bp Nichol
by Daphne Marlatt can you ham it, a serve a slice of, wry it gives your ears a breath, er worrier space it oh hear it however it beep’s mind’s
Chinese Proverbs
by David Antin if the ground under your feet is wet, the sky is to blame before you buy shoes, make sure you measure your feet if you doubt what
Crossing Bryant Park Susan Robertson (1943 –1997)
by Hugh Seidman Rink down — up last fall mirroring summer. 1200 steps to work — Seventh to Madison. First, past 50 — your bridal two step. New,
Devoid of Exclusions
by Larry Fagin “Nothing whatever, it arises as everything.” Lemon zest. I can’t seem to keep quiet which is a pity because you really need to
Diana gone for Diana Kemble
by Daphne Marlatt moon on wave on moons wavering water moan a move on mooning the singular
Drones
by Maxine Chernoff “Operators fly the planes from air – conditioned trailers thousands of miles from the war zone.” Porch lights appear —
Elegiac
by George Economou In memoriam — Paul Blackburn (1926 –1971), poet and translator of the troubadours; Federico Garcia Lorca (1898 –1936), and
Evidence
by Maxine Chernoff “To philosophize is to learn how to die.” Montaigne Of houses, empty or noticed, to rooms whose lamps have left their light
For The Aztec Goddess
by Diane Wakoski “Take one,” she said, opening her closet of frankincense & myrrh. In it hung anoraks, parkas, wool jackets, raincoats, even
from the Machig Labdrön
by Barbara Moraff Sitting in a chair writing on my knees broken ankle pinned w/steel sunrise in my skull from the Machig Labdrön
Grey Goddess
by Diane Wakoski thinking of Patricia Waters in St. Augustine With Minerva’s eyes of corrugated knowing she wraps us in hand –
lacustrine, the air . . . .
by Gerrit Lansing Edgy words, a discipline. The poor, with us always. Us ? We sought the pale intensities. Sunny the
Monkey’s Recovery
by Larry Fagin You haven’t lost the desire to reason effectively. You still care about what’s published under your name, you. And you’re
Nothing Left for Ted Enslin
by Steve Luttrell Beginning with it all laid out against im – probable conclusions, one gets “caught up” in it moved along and suddenly
November 2011
by Barbara Moraff revol ving bird feeder’s Squirrel losing in – visibility chatters back at his reflection : Seedspray
Poem
by Larry Fagin Sleep faster, we need the pillows. Yiddish proverb I went for a shvitz but it didn’t solve my problems (old age, sickness,
Rain Goddess: What I Learned As A Tourist in the Yucatan
by Diane Wakoski The stones, not Olmec. Break your ankle against saw palmetto a slash of brawling foliage, unregulated And
Russian Proverbs
by David Antin the wave betrays the wind thirst teaches you the value of water if you have nothing you’ve got nothing to lose the squash calls
Save the Barnes Collection
by Clark Coolidge Wow (wow) wait till those moon, bells run down this church is called EI Primo it even admits blackhats stirred up
still plenty stills the rivers
by Daphne Marlatt thunder rain for hours while standing hills drink in and under evanescent sprinkler jets on the already soused lawn in the
Tennyson Speaks and All
by Clark Coolidge Is that . . . ? yes it’s him now every bicycle is in danger but that metal chap he remains a waffle copy of Frank
the news from Fukushima
by Daphne Marlatt wha – ? black wall of waters rolling in – ter urban seawet wreckage after missing, dead 27,000 up to 28 —
The rite at the hunting site
by Clayton Eshleman “The rite at the hunting site, given to the souls of the animal killed, was thus basic, in the sense that it
The World Revealed
by Thomas Meyer And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last
Three Cigarettes for Bruce and Carola
by Kenneth Rosen 1. Somewhere there’s a little Italy, where sunrise precedes its ruby, Clouds pink as flamingos, soon white as paper, a fool’s
Under the Music
by Maxine Chernoff Under the music, a baby cries in the audience. A police siren meets a thunderclap meets quantum theory. Under the music you
Unfinished Poem for Fran Antman
by Hugh Seidman The Andeans sledge for Morococha copper. They hoped quick years: to buy land — or a son from the pit. In the Cemetery of Heaven,
Variation One The Pirate
Jerome Rothenberg from The Gorky Variations draws blood from stone or brilliance that a paper bag conceals men on a journey who can spy
Veiled Absentee
by Nathaniel Tarn Is he from Babylon, or perhaps Sumer, or from far beyond that, the Paleolithic ? Who will ever guarantee provenance ? He walks
Whitening
by Kenneth Rosen Two silver dandelions gone white, Late autumn, one swatted half – bald By a paw of the dog, the other A beautiful, silver
Woman of Jesus
by Rochelle Owens It is about skin and hair of the yoga mistress from Rosario Portugal remember how I said her hair was a long hanging rope
Fall 2011
“Imagination Is the Only Lucid Way to Meet Life” — Alan, Pessin
by Will Staple The flying penis prepares a community of antlers a tranquil reunion of great singers a fraternity of the
A Memory
by Joanna McClure Flies buzz Dry dust Hot bright sun The taste of canned milk The smell of pines Mothers move around a wood stove.
Already Ghosts
by Margaret Randall Because I want to help my momma, because my step dad hates me, because there’s nothing for me at home, because I want a new
Appropriation
by Edward Sanders Dylan heard Dave Van Ronk’s version of “House of the Rising Sun” & recorded it for his first album then asked for Dave’s
At the Edges of the Pueblo
by Margaret Randall A great tree falls on a downed power line and this time the fire is dubbed accidental: Cerro Grande, Las Conchas, no
Before Solstice
by Diane di Prima the mystery in the Brocade the jewels upon the Tree wild snatches of Song on the wind from a mouth Inhuman how could I turn
Book 4 of The River: The Mainstream
by Lewis MacAdams I. At first she displayed all […]
Book for David Meltzer
by Julie Rogers In your chair, your cave head bent to book your prayer, your cradle quiet lights your eyes, fingertips, bowing spine wooing mind
By Robert Branaman
I painted over one hundred thousand paintings I painted over one hundred thousand paintings Just this morning When I ate breakfast at two PM They
Chasin The Ambulance
by Amiri Baraka Where you goin to go If you don’t go Nowhere ? In a circle, a circle of circles Surround the nowhere of your scream. If you not
Don Snyder, Photographer
by Gerard Malanga What then of the pictures he left behind in his sleep the mounds of tabloids bundled and yellowed the looseleaf binders falling
Downwind from Pecos
by Margaret Randall Downwind from Pecos, cedar scent invades our nostrils, transparent as sky’s unreachable blue until this cloud that is not
Dreams of Wartimes
by Anne Waldman There was a time when we were a flat earth why not consider our one dimension as total, then no one believed. Not to see
Elegy
by Ilya Kaminsky They say so much sky in her chest addicted her. They claim, with inappropriate laughter, she requested to be locked in a bird
End of Track
by Gerard Malanga You’ll not find me in historic Hudson among the periwinkles and clematis. You’ll not find the footstep traces soon followed by
Engraving for Lawrence
by Joanna McClure Like your engraving — I stand Behind, to one side of, The long open door. Outside, night light Makes a Palmer sky From black
Eurydice
by Robert Kelly [Eurydice, naked, in leaf shadow, half – hidden in bushes, lilac, springtime, sunset, warm. She speaks.] 1. I have been
Fingers Pull Triggers
by Hettie Jones Think about it: someone shoots your buddy dead — so you grab your gun and the blast you send strikes the heart of the matter —
Fish Hawk at Work
by Jonathan Greene Stayed busy trying to track the osprey’s footprints on the fast – moving river.
four threes are trees heading home from Exchanging Intentions (preverbs )
by George Quasha The space between me and what I touch breathes freer today. It’s possible now to say what keeps saying itself. Ask
from Stress
by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge I fear one stray word is more powerful than my child’s vitality. But not speaking can send out huge, mutated thought
Ghost Riders in the Sky
by Lewis Warsh It was like a scene from a movie starring Fred MacMurray and Vincent Price: “But I bought you everything you own,” the character
Harry Fainlight, 1935 -1982
by Gerard Malanga He would’ve been the last one you’d expect to find out at Blackpool on a sea breeze winter’s day or at East Parade long past.
Holy Shit !
by Amiri Baraka The most Dangerous Religion in the world Is Christianity ! Check the bodies ! Islam & Judaism Are not even Close
Janine Pommy Vega, 1942 – 2010
by Gerard Malanga She came from a place of no particular consequence with a vision as wide as the bright blue skies and lived by her wits, making
Jen Hofer
by Jen Hofer If you want Jen Hofer’s graphics I will send them to you separately as they did not “cut and paste” into word pad file.
Lost in the Air
by Jonathan Greene After the stroke the words break up like wind spreading out sky – writing cloud snippets floating away never again
Lunar Moth
by Jonathan Greene Washing the dishes, looking up — a lunar moth against the window. Often I forget how close — this other world.
Lust
by Joanna McClure I long to give this body — Not to science, not to the fire. I long to be given, whole For the fish in the sea to nibble away. I
May the Force Be with You: A Poem about Meditation
by Diane di Prima Maybe they are never done with us the speechless full Moon or the Force, and how many other hearts ? Be like a mirror of
Message Received
by Jonathan Greene The full moon swimming the whole ocean to tickle my toes.
Metaphor
by Joanna McClure The tsunami Seen from a hillside video camera Advances slowly, serenely Carrying trucks, houses, trees, trash. While in frame
mouth surfing from Witnessing the Place Awake (preverbs )
by George Quasha 1 on the pale trail of the pores on fire Speaking with chilies in your mouth produces
Political Visionary of Note
by Amiri Baraka In The Sixties George Romero warned us About the Tea Parties to come With his Night of the Living Dead
Sanguis Spiritualis for Constance
by Will Staple The goddess had a veil and no one could look upon her face and lie but one man had to see her face and so he lifted her veil
Saying Goodbye
by Edward Sanders Bus to NYC to see Tuli in ICU at Downtown Beekman Hospital He’s peaceful with now – & – then irregular heart
Soneto Cubano
by Joe Richey Cuba, I tried to explain, is not just a place where six square walls reside. Eleven million people raised on revolution live there
Strangers When We Meet
by Bill Berkson Homage /Obit I like to have a little secret at the end of my poems, The way nothing is ever finished Nor do I abandon a thing
Stuntman
by David Meltzer I wanted to be a stunt man, crashing through glass doors, pound out cowboy hero face in B – movie saloon, fly out
Tent Shaker Voice
by Charles Plymell It was the voice of the Game Lord only heard when you know it at the intersection where ancient people walked the four
The Nature of Inspiration for Philip Whalen
Diane di Prima Read It said. I read. Then Write It said. I found the back of an envelope & wrote It down now Type It told me Fuck off I
To Live
by Ilya Kaminsky To live, as the great book commands, is to love. Such love is not enough ! — the heart needs a little foolishness ! So I fold
Together
by Jonathan Greene In an avenue of trees dead ones hugging live ones, holding on, their tops crying together in high wind. Old loves or old
Wearing the Sweater for Marilyn Colvin
by Hettie Jones As you advised, I am wearing the sweater I won’t be wearing after I’m dead I’m wearing it while I still have choices to leave
Woodshedding
by Hettie Jones . . . my wolf . . . at the foot of the bed / in the dark all night
Year One: Or Why We Need Health Care Reform
by Amiri Baraka We in some hot water Fulla crocodiles. Boy Come along In a boat say “Get in, get in” “I can save yr ass from these crocks And
You Are a Hologram
by Edward Sanders “You Are A Hologram . . . . projected from the edge of the universe” shrieked the cover of New Scientist (for 1-17- 09 ) &
Summer 2011
. . . Then Huncke, Then Corso, Then Janine, Then Ira, Then . . . for Laki
by Wayne Atherton What of the unseen elder Outlaw rebel death bird Gazing out from red – rimmed watery eyes Fraught with
(in the middle of a conversation)
by Alexander Mironov . . . Hello, hello, I only hear you badly! — Goodness! I can’t see anything, though I’m glad to see and hear you. Change
African Gray Parrot With Brain The Size of A Walnut Understands A Numerical Concept Akin to Zero
by Anselm Hollo Yes my dear that may well be true but I do wish this pleasant early June evening breeze would evaporate all the terrible servants
Alexander Mironov
by Alexander Mironov Do not dream of living outside language, even if the ground is so tongue – tied that everything that falls to earth
Alone in my room to Mother
by Anzhelina Polonskaya I’m in my room. Alone. Remnants of sleep stick to my eyelids, like flies. Window wells heave with cold snow — a
Astronomy 1
by Harvey Mudd I paid no mind to the wind and rain; the clouds, though, these I noticed for they drifted along the building tops, and obscured
Benson, Arizona
by Harvey J. Baine barbecued emu, ostrich, pickled chicken eggs, wings and buffalo tongue at the Horse Shoe Cafe where Tammy Wynette and Nancy
BOA
by Alexander Mironov Horror, after many years, Will turn out to be less bitter, Like the boa constrictor embracing Your neck but feeling only
By Aleksey Porvin 1
It seems so far from whence it came, its two inscriptions barely made out by the eye at night — a vague sign on an avenue, hanging above the
By Aleksey Porvin 2
People roam the stalks searching for new life there, and each just talks and talks — as if all is prepared: among them all the chatter is
By Aleksey Porvin 3
A storm cloud strikes a street with hail to mask despair (a passage to this earth with no choice in the air) ? The creation, liberty here,
By Aleksey Porvin 4
Woods, too tired to walk into the white, did you not find a way to warm up to the blue amid the branches, wrapped round pines along a
By Aleksey Porvin 5
Like March snow, you spend white until it thaws — dark patches, perhaps brightened by a pack of cigarettes — empty throw – away,
By Andrei Sen-Senkov
00 – 00 In a black-walled museum a painting conceived. Its flowers grow with subtitles for those who don’t believe in Kandinsky’s botany.
Called Back
by Lidija Dimkovska You called me back and I had to return. On the Peter Pan bus from New York to Amherst with 50 cents change clutched in my
Cupid’s Bullet
by Bill Edmondson The night I fell backward off the stool At Rancho Nicasio Bar And the owner suggested I get the hell out I gathered my bones
Flood Stage
by Richard Jackson Sometimes we are amazed to find that we are still alive. Sometimes we reduce the world to a single street and the street to
For Ehren Watada
by Jack Hirschman This warring government having lost its people and having exposed its lies and its twists and turns of the knife in the back of
From Fiends Fell Journals
by Tom Pickard 6th November 2003 Worked at home until 2:30 pm; it was a struggle between appetite and attainment. Read a few Border Ballads. As
Geary and Gough — The day of the assassinations, November 27, 1978
by Bill Edmondson At St. Mary’s of the Assumption Under infrequent sun At certain times on certain days The shadow of a woman’s breast
Harrison And Beale
by Bill Edmondson You’ve parked on the overpass Must get down to Beale Street Could take the long way around But the unmarked mouth of a
High in an Alpine Café
by Tom Pickard A small isolated café with a large empty car park overlooks a range of moorland tops that drop into a lush valley. Sausage rolls,
Homage
by Tom Pickard a stripper strokes the slope of her hip; Hokusai painting mount Fuji.
Hrant Dink
by Jack Hirschman Here truths Hrant Dink, here braves. In our grave mouths the light of his courage pulsates like deathless hearts beating
Janine Pommy – Vega 1942 – 2010
by Jack Hirschman How many inmates are weeping in their cells tonight, having got the word: Janine Pommy Vega has died. They adore her and
Leaves
by Anzhelina Polonskaya Like lost children, the dry leaves on the mournful sidewalks wind around our legs. Could those fallen leaves ever find
Ledge
by Alicia Fisher Lovely is the wild impassive rise of the sun. The day boils and sings. I lean into its cusp. I am here. This new is enough.
Lessons in Astronomy
by Harvey J. Baine Without roses for the acrobats turning on themselves in the shape of trees at night mouths open on small spines curved hands
Mail Payment To
by Alicia Fisher God only knows how many people leave sticky notes for their dead, Pens pressed against slump – shouldered memories. We
midwinter
by Tom Pickard the house empty a gust of sun and some bird thinks it spring I’ve just seen her on a vid the river in flood in a mis –
Mortal remains
by Harvey Mudd Distant mountains, an ancient uplift of granites, snow capped, seen glancing past a woman who is silhouetted against a world that
New Year’s Day 2010
by Tom Pickard the blizzard blown out a snow blower goes below sun white Watch Hill a growking raven groaks, my first – foot flying past
objet trouvé
by Tom Pickard don’t get me wrong, neighbour, I just want your dog to stop shitting on my step. I may be dissing it, it could be your bitch. I’m
On Disasters — After Seneca
by Harvey Mudd Disasters generally come around with a smug certainty of their place at the table. The beloved pet, the brindle cat, eaten by the
One Flew Over the Rainbow’s Nest
by Wayne Atherton Gay culture co – opted the rainbow, adopted Judy Garland, bought up all the tickets to every Cher concert, left us dull
Outtakes and Non Sequiturs from a longer work still in progress
by Wayne Atherton On puddle top at Puddle Dock, a symphony of rain rings; the whipsnap of canvas mast on Gundalow Down at the docks at
Rabbit Year, Penelope
by Laura Behr The first notes, sung upside down, in a warbler’s song. Eyes closed. Moonlight stripped, throat full of love. Relief bracing,
Sitting in Peaceful Lamplight
by Anselm Hollo reading a book on how to become a better person Zophiel the cat touches my leg and asks me “Why don’t you write a book about
Snow within
by Anzhelina Polonskaya But should they say that snow has fallen . . . Snow on the black battlements on the sidewalks that scream with the voices
Still Life with Potato Field
by Anzhelina Polonskaya Tell me, why is there war if not to leave buckles in lumps of clay ? The potato field sleeps. At night you can’t imagine
The Classicist for Susan Connelly
by Kendall Merriam She changed my mind on the way home from Shakespeare’s summer place no political stance, no food riot just how much she
The Empress of China for Helen Lee – Righter
by Kendall Merriam It’s high tide on an old coast your warriors and court await your orders across the earth knowing you have faced pain
The Matriarch of Big Green for Gloria Witham
by Kendall Merriam The summers were good pay, weather, catches the two of you worked hard during the winter as school teachers earned more
The Pika
by Anselm Hollo So aren’t we all the trembling fawn or baby rat entering re – entering this terrifying place so place is it but time
The riddle of a piece of string
by Tom Pickard at one end; sharp, penetrating, a sliver of steel slid between ribs to stake the heart, solid as a hangman’s knot, cruelly
to Elena Shvarts
by Alexander Mironov Addressing You, When You in St. Peter’s Basilica Put out a candle Which is like the sword of pagan Saul, So hot a candle,
To goad my friggin peers
by Tom Pickard Fuck the sonnet, I piss upon it And those who seek to launch A sinking reputation on it As though it were some talismanic
Where Do Sons Come From ?
by Alicia Fisher It was vengeance, hot and dove – soft, that brought you to the wide doomy edge, a lucid candle standing Godtall and
Spring 2011
2. Zainab’s Lament in Damascus
by Agha Shahid Ali A segment of the narrative poem “From Amherst to Kashmir” Over Hussain’s mansion what night has fallen? Look at me, O
A History of Paisley for Anuradha Dingwaney
by Agha Shahid Ali Their footsteps formed the paisley when Parvati, angry after a quarrel, ran away from Shiva. He eventually caught
A Raindrop Observed
by Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller translated by Agha Shahid Ali with the poet How a raindrop fallen from the roof becomes light all by itself though
All the Ways You Know to Love Us ghazal for asa
by Andrea L. Watson We are blaze you find such dangerous beauty — One thousand jewels confined as dangerous beauty. Veil us in
Collected Works
by Peter Marcus The world scoured by mop, broom and rain. Landscapes fallow as the moon, as my mother fretful without her wig between the
Dear Shahid
by Michelle Demers In Vermont, where the year has four, distinct seasons, you brought your exotic flavors to the mountain, and taught us all how
Farewell Beloved
by Michelle Demers They ask me to tell them what Shahid means: Listen, listen: It means “The Beloved” in Persian, “witness” in Arabic.
Farewell for Patricia O’Neill
by Agha Shahid Ali Solitudinum faciunt et pacem appellant. — Tacitus (speaking through a British chieftain
Foreword
by Hena Ahmad Agha Shahid Ali was a poet, an Indian – American, a Kashmiri – American, an “all – American Shiite” (as he
from “The Tinajera Notebook”
Forrest Gander * * * So the present hoses itself out. And with it — Sitting in the lobby of the clinic, its walls painted like
Ghazal for Open Hands
by Martín Espada in memory of Agha Shahid Ali December 10, 2001 Northampton, Massachusetts The imam stands above your
Had We Met, I Imagine We’d Have Talked
by Zilka Joseph till sun up, you who knew my language would have understood my homeless heart and how home lives in many
In a Foreign Country for Maayan and Adi
by Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller translated by Agha Shahid Ali with the poet Dawn after dawn my mother — a fanatic to Let the air in Let the air in
Listen to the Falling of the Snow
by Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller translated by Agha Shahid Ali with the poet Listen The fall of the snow like sand rustled to a hiss in the wind it
Little Elegy
by Susie Meserve I think of you like ball – peen hammers, tapping a hall of mirrors. Like the foghorn on a clear day. (Is death abrupt,
Little Red Riding Hood’s Reply to the Wolf
by Victoria Zak for my friend — in enchantment — Shahid Only you and I know what really happened that day, my wolf. I wasn’t a child. I
Of Ghazals
by Eric Torgersen Call me Ishmael tonight. — Agha Shahid Ali Can you hear it somewhere, Shahid, this groundswell of ghazals? You,
On Steep Himalayan Roads
by Zilka Joseph I read the warning: It is better to be late, Mr. Driver than to be the late Mr. Driver and wondered who heeded these words, these
Patience
by Yehudit Ben-Zvi Heller translated by Agha Shahid Ali with the poet My grandmother always served tea hot in cups of thin glass, thin with
Shahid
by Tony Hoagland How could you, Shahid, have been so cruel, as to show us what self–love looked like? Was it a kind of punishment? It was
Skating With Jupiter for Agha Shahid Ali
by Douglas “Woody” Woodsum Something there is that loves mitten – piercing cold in the quiet heart of midwinter. The sun sinks. Early
Stationery
by Agha Shahid Ali The moon did not become the sun. It just fell on the desert in great sheets, reams of silver handmade by you. The night is
Tea Cosy from Kashmir i.m. Agha Shahid Ali
by Peggy O’Brien January. It’s been a year. You must be almost cosy Under your cold comforter. That’s, of course, just silly Poetry. Your body
The Half-Inch Giant for Agha Shahid Ali
by D. K. McCutchen Not a poet, me. Never was, But he listened kindly Heard the tight throat Dedicating words To a beloved Person, Newly lost. He
The Wavering ghazal for great – grandmother Ruth
by Caroline Adams A pair so slender conjoins; twin hands, at ends reach the fragile skin of hands. Innocence not nearly as pure as the calm,
The Wolf’s Postscript to “Little Red Riding Hood”
by Agha Shahid Ali First, grant me my sense of history: I did it for posterity, for kindergarten teachers and a clear moral: Little girls
Three Horses
by Christopher Merrill I am the mare night forgot — blessed Brooding, brilliant. Remembered. I am the colt women corral, leaving Paradise,
Three Nonsense Poems for Hannah and Abigail
by Christopher Merrill How much mush is too much mush If you love mush too much? How much slush is too much slush If you love slush and such?
Three Questions
by Christopher Merrill And if there is no change in our condition? Seven hang – gliders set their sights on a lodge Boarded up since the
Three Seasons of Fighting
by Hugh Coyle i Last night, between skirmishes, we crept away from our lakeside camp and carved lines of love on the ice with knives and the tips
Thus in the Limit
by Jon Wilkins Just like you, she came here for the fountains of youth and chocolate. She found them occupado. Occupational hazards and other
Thus in the Limit 2
by Jon Wilkins Just like you, she came here with a bag full of chalk and yellow tape. Her fear of snakes sneaks up on her now and again, coiling
Thus in the Limit 3
by Jon Wilkins Just like you, she came here overflowing with a need to feel superior, an age – old rage holds her heart — gentle but
Tonight
by Agha Shahid Ali Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar — Laurence Hope Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell
What Was Once an Ocean for Agha Shahid Ali
by Jim Davis I wander through honey mustard hills, weave through marching brambles, groaning as your literary army stretches its roots,
When Paper Weeps
by Lorri Centineo You wrote, “The world is full of paper.” And purple ink. O Kasmiri, Did Shakespeare pull your magic to midsummer nights? Fae
Writ in Water for Agha Shahid Ali
by Dean Kostos When Keats coaxed his mind into a page of whiteness, he unrolled a scroll of seeing, required for witness. Latin spirare weaves
Winter 2011
— for Duncan McNaughton
by James Koller Morning Star over the Uintas, red sun coming up behind those mountains. We missed seeing you in Bolinas. Did you come out? I’m
[ When I speak of death, I do not mean the one ]
by Russell Evatt When I speak of death, I do not mean the one in the ground there, to whose funeral I wore a red shirt because I chose not to
A Darkness
by G. H. Smith A darkness lies within us, which is the driving force of the world. It is darker than the hour before dawn, yet without it, there
A Heath For Lear, A Corridor For Us
by Alan Holder King Lear required a storm upon a heath to bring him down from his crazy height, acknowledge his, our, bare, fork’d animal.
A Message From the Memoirist — for Bibi
by Paul Pines 4:00 AM at the Northwoods Inn the room temp set for 70 but the fan never stops blowing I can’t sleep imagine writers driving
Abducted Friends
by Manoli Kouremetis Like a ransomer’s note — my memories of you and I squish against one another. Mismatched letters of sentences ill-fitting —
Antlers
by Russell Evatt I found a head in the dirt, eyes open, covered in sand. But no flies and no blood. I should say it was winter, and this the
Autumn at the Lost and Found
by G. H. Smith If you go looking for the devil, you will find him. Even on a sunny day by all accounts ablaze with piety. Even in the sanctuary
Better
by Kevin Sweeney He thinks it’s only a phase, my niece said about me and her life as a lesbian because I go to Mass every Sunday. I hope when I
Biting Concern
by Russell Evatt I had a notion today that it feels terrific to die. Finally, that’s over. From the park bench I heard the refined static of
Blue Fruit
by Manoli Kouremetis I take your hand, say “soon” — how many times have I said “soon” trapped in traffic and doctors’ waiting rooms? If only I
El Niño 1997
by Gerard Grealish “No se puede vivir sin amar, were the words on the house.” — Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano Out of the almost
From Your Hostess at the T & A Museum
by Kathleen Balma If you will not tip me for my dance, tip me for daring to ask. Or if, having stared at me directly for the duration of a song
Hope
by Kevin Sweeney At first we thought it was the Hope who lived on Broadway, my niece’s high school friend but this Hope was from Ferry Village,
Interview With the Old Poet: Ferlinghetti at 91 — for David
by Paul Pines A star is born again and again and again until it becomes a Black Hole and no light can escape its density this enormous
Island Forest
by Maurizio Cucchi I’m not in my house anymore, but in that breezy place that gives me everything. Its serene geometry provides an entryway for
it cares not what you’ll become
by Gabor G. Gyukics a cigarette smoulders with you together the wind comes in to fetch the smoke looks around what else there is to take but
Just As You Are, Without One Plea
by Nancy A. Henry Given my inheritance of glass clowns, I cannot flee this place with impunity. Why should you shiver? Why withdraw your
Lines After Reading Du Fu
by James Koller I open my door to two dippers, a river of stars, enough moon light to watch a breeze lift the blue ribbons hung from the high
Marathon — for Beckett
by Gerard Grealish Though you have just run half of what will be before you three weeks from now and you are still, on this long distance
Saints
by Alan Holder Sebastian, converted to a reverse porcupine, Thomas à Becket, struck dead by swords, Joan of Arc transformed to a torch, Agnes of
Sit by the River
by Geoffrey Gaddis Water shapes its banks, banks shape the river. One is constantly containing change, the other constantly changing. One stands
Sonny Kenner has his red guitar
by Kevin Rabas in hand, and moves through the melody as if what he wants is for everyone now to give and get that long kiss in this room on this
Terrarium
by Nancy A. Henry Piety, New moon, stingy-petaled single rose, full blown, you’ve gone straight from maid to crone. Let us moisten the moss for
that is your own
by Gabor G. Gyukics during tail-wind the headwind pushes you back only the motion remains your body is searching for the gap your eyes are
The Dead Man’s Alibi
by Giovanni Raboni Judas says that his alibi was shaken, the dead man’s: that’s why the dead man went down to the courtyard. But the alibi was
The Fire Starter
by David Sloan “Scatter as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind.”
The Forgiveness Project — after Szymborska
by Kathleen Balma Under what conditions should one admit wrongdoing? Is confessing in a dream as good as in a booth? Who goes
The Spaces Between
by David Sloan What insistent whispering crowds out sleep? It coats me like pollen, buoys me against the weight of daylight, points to the spaces
The Transcendental in January
by normal “Winter midnight My voice does not Sound like my own.” — Otsuji Snow to
Told Again — The Short Life of Yu Xuanji
by James Koller A dark wind filled with rain blows branches against darker walls. The stuff of wild dreams. Thighs covered with light
Vermont
by G. H. Smith Four in the morning, refuge of moths, moonlight’s underbelly of mist. The woods are a misery of mud and stones, discarded books,
Vernal Song
by J. B. Sisson I buried him two years ago today, the first day warm enough to bask outside and watch the fluctuation of the tide and spring’s
Walking with Yi Kyubo
by Geoffrey Gaddis I walk through seasons to find words for poems. A stirring sprinkles dapples on the leaf floor. Soon bare limbs will toss
Walter’s Canon
by J. B. Sisson This music crept upon me from old Walter, infernal noise of Pachelbel and crew. Walter enlivens his greenhouse next door with
We Read
by Kevin Rabas At the Olpe Chicken House behind glass there’s a copy of Ken Ohm’s new book, Ducks Across the Moon. An old woman and her husband
whose face it is
by Gabor G. Gyukics the mirror shows a different picture every day the flame shooting out from the fireplace is counting the new arrivals the
Fall 2010
“all the tired horses in the sun how’m i s’posed to get any riding done?”
by Wade Linebaugh Being a strange boybird, Icarus is too busy to take Mom & Dad’s calls & a little girl eats wagon wheels covered in
American Cuneiform
by Glenn Morazzini He kneels on a prayer rug of sand, in a crumpled kurta, hands tied behind his back, looking up at the lesser gods, his
As Might Love
by Allen Fowler Pierce and ugly caw embroider an edge which parries wind as might love, so so softly that the whole moves as if through water.
Ashes
by Matt W. Miller Tell me the pocketknife that was left over from a dream. Tell me about black bread, pork and beans, stains of cigarettes on
Before Arriving
by Sally Molini Walking to my friends’ place, I know the evening will be a series of stock visuals: Humberto tossing salad, me slicing bread
Blunted Night
by Allen Fowler Mice thwart their teeth with what wood holds in the walls, answer to a boning itch, question to a witnessing ear. Poison has been
Break Wake Routine
by Allen Fowler Each day a question stumps us from the rich dark drama of night, what to eat mostly, what package to wear. Our constant doing
Butterfly Effect: Watching The News On TV While Arguing With My Wife
by Glenn Morazzini According to chaos theory the world is in a state of dynamic flux where all things are inter–connected,
Carnal Knowledge
by Richard Taylor I want to see the wounds I’ve dealt and show the scars I wear. I would point out the faintest outline of a footprint on the
Climbs My Limbs
by Michael Danahy I am a tree Of blood Rooted in skin. My brain Branches blood and nerve. Touch me: touch skin to skin. We will comb The birds
Contradictions
by David Budbill Zen monks like it quiet. Kuang-shan Lao Tzu said, Beautiful words are not true. True words are not beautiful. I think
Creation
by Wade Linebaugh These are the final nights of spring. A man feels God under the hot stars, when he must take fistfuls of grass just to stay
Cui Dono? after Catullus
by Richard Taylor To whom am I to give these poems, polished, erased, smoothed again and fitted into murmured line, the limb and sinew of
Dirty Snow
by Renée Hearrin The cedar cape drips its milk-white mask, quaint boucléd roof and icicle lace, patchy wet windows, porch and walk to muddled
Dreaming of North Korea
by David McCann Hours, it seemed, motorcycle riding through Korea’s countryside, first time I ever spoke Korean in a dream. “Going South. Know
fall fugue
by Wade Linebaugh the pebble in my mouth tastes like chalk, an acrid river-rock culled from the bed of earth’s strangest river. i sympathize with
Foundation
by Matthew M. Cariello Clutter in the vestibule where steps buckled and mortar cracked. I watched my father crawl into the dark beneath the stoop
High Note
by David McCann “So C me,” he’d call to Judge Moon As he tried once again to tune His Greene Stradivarius, A truly hilarious Knock-off by Bobby
In The Dark
by Helene Swarts My dreams are burning like cartoons on fire the characters run through the frames abandoning form calling out to me to leap
Mavka #6. The Kiss
by Padma Thornlyre I lie alone. Sappho And thus, under a fat moon in February, the wheel turns, our failures at last not wrong- turns,
Mavka #8.
by Padma Thornlyre I am not so full of wine and elk medallions grilled rare that I forsake utterance. Lichens, too, have filled me up, near
Motel Noir
by Zara Raab In one corner, a chair; near the door, another, cover in mottled blue, twin beds like box cars jutting into the room, beds crisply
Pi
by Ethan Stebbins If I could place a value on the entire coast of Maine or account in full for the people I love or even approximate my emotional
Po Chü-i and His Poetry Karma
by David Budbill Poor Po Chü-i cursing his poetry karma while he brushes out another poem. He, the Taoist devotee, disciple of silence, seeking
Po Chü-i Believed in Idleness
by David Budbill Po Chü-i believed in idleness — we might call it “staring at the wall” — that waiting, listening for the words of the poem to
Reading Your Way into the Ocean of a Book
by Hope Coulter For the first few lines of a book you’re aware of the text, the black on cream, the building of sentences out of words. The
Take To Water
by Renée Hearrin Wilted in the heat, the limp ray petals of a Shasta daisy hang in defeat. Underneath the brittle back yard, its roots search as
The Fugitive Oil for James Wright
by Michael Danahy The Monongahela, that flammable river, for once threatened to prove its invisible light. The ghosts of sons of miners’
The Window
by Matthew M. Cariello Then I knew one word, birthright’s rudiment uttered in hunger’s warm room. The sense of me without sense. I would have
To Whom
by Anele Rubin To whom can you say the wind suddenly stopped, the evening clouds were tinted pink, the mare laid her heavy head on my shoulder?
What You See Is What You Get
by David Budbill Thoughts never twisty. Confucius, The Analects Grace Paley said once, in a hand written note to me, We write big,
Yesterday’s War
by Helene Swarts Heat languishes, tired of teasing strength from stone. Huge birds tear at the heart of memory; every headline a crucible, every
Summer 2010
Almería
by Russ Sargent Calle Lorca will always be the scent of fresh bread clinging to me all the way to the tenth century ruin where al – Mutasim
Alone on the Deschutes
by Elly Bookman There is a morning, and there are brown eyes rising somewhere against a dense piano bass line meant to begin things. This river
Bloom
by Michael David Madonick Puffed – up, as if weight might give body to song, the cardinal’s staccato rakes the morning air. Beneath him,
Busy Man of Affairs
by E. Michael Desilets The Birdman of Burbank tinkered with his antique tin toys in the garage, nudging a bit of orange crud off the beak of a
Closer
by Karina Borowicz If I cry when I tell you the dream don’t console me simply believe me it’s hard to put my darkness into words to describe the
Coat Hangers in an Empty Closet
by Douglas Woody Woodsum Someone hammered something so thin It could not help but bend and hang And did it again and again until A keyboard made
Cool Spring
by Douglas Woody Woodsum Light spring rain on a metal roof: hi–hat and snare at the start of a song, measure after measure till the rest
Cygnus
by Annie Seikonia mere skin mere bones part of this deepening day warbled conversations: thunder and hush later when the light has seeped away,
Deya—In memory of Robert Graves
by Russ Sargent I found a road through the olive grove. An empty chair at the stone table. The sea a long way down. I didn’t know what else to
Fog
by Michael Palma Sometimes, like an old clipping I carry around with me, I unfold the time we went, For no particular reason, For a weekend on
For The Gulf
by Jonathan Skinner Some wings lift skyward testing the airs, circle round and wait — feeling for pressure shifts, advancing fronts spiraling in
Foundation
by Matthew M. Cariello Clutter in the vestibule where steps buckled and mortar cracked, I watched my father crawl into the dark beneath the stoop
Inventing the Land
by Andrea L. Watson Now this is what you shall do — Take the land each way you dream a lover earth skin seamless against his found beauty No
Landscape with Machines
by Steve Luttrell Machines are our companions where we’re going machines are our companions all stainless in their steely skin cold, and so
Lanesville
by Elizabeth Hoover Photography is an oath to silence, so I gave up on faces one summer in Lanesville. The light wrapping her body like a sweet
Light and Sweet
by Michael Palma How Whitman would have loved it here, This diner on this Sunday morning. Bright with the chrism of the rain, He’d track pure mud
Like Any Clown
by Michael Palma The one who thinks he’s in despair Or nearly there Crawlstrokes down the morning Flapping translucent wings. Beauty’s withdrawn,
Mock Heaven
by Daniel Lusk “Why am I soft in the middle when life is so hard?” Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al” A young woman bursts from the
Muskrat
by Michael David Madonick We cannot reconcile ourselves, the incongruities of our bodies and of our natures, that which is cast in the purposeful
Néfer
by Victoria Livingstone The first time I didn’t know you. The second time, I did — Federico Garcia Lorca I fell for you,
No More Either/Or
by Steve Luttrell Let’s leave it here that whole thing come like a shy intruder (a souvenir of waiting) in the unending night two days of rain
One
by Franz Wright Bodies are endless, but sentience gazing from endlessly various eyes is one, and I can prove it. Music’s an idealized and
Organ Music
by Elly Bookman In a living room that couldn’t have been ours or even anyone’s we knew because it was decorated entirely with stainless steel and
Pèlerinage
by Russ Sargent Dreaming of Petrarch’s world with its mountain laurels and green water in those streams running through the Vaucluse where Acteon
Reflection
by Franz Wright I wear this small fish hook of crucifix Look how it helps keep the head weighted down down with shame, with the glory and shame
Salvia
by Annie Seikonia in the aftermath of twin mourning doves next the rows of sleeping buds Persephone’s bouquet smolders deep purple flowers
Seeing the Bottom Off Thompson’s Point
by Daniel Lusk These zebra mussels are mistakes we made in our youth. How clear the water now and how clearly we can see them. They seem to have
Souls by Water
by Daniel Lusk — after a painting by Sally Coppersmith Out of our view overhead, clouds like spinnakers. Stippled lake giving way to
stop
by Michael David Madonick it’s hard to keep a rhythm with the wind in your face birds tacking like loose newspaper clouds a kind of wind sock the
The Lamp
by Franz Wright Dark blue evening street with here and there a lighted window of the at home, or the possibly not. Lamp, yellow circles
The Salar de Uyuni Bolivia’s salt desert
by Victoria Livingstone The December sky fills the salt flats with water and the Earth becomes a mirror. Flooding blue erases the horizon — even
The Water
by Daniel Hales See how the wind folds and pleats the water? Hear how each wave says, repeats: the water? After two years marooned on pine
The Window
by Matthew M. Cariello Then I knew one word, birthright’s rudiment uttered in hunger’s warm room. The sense of me without sense. I would have
Train
by E. Michael Desilets There were weekends at the Happy Swallow when gap – toothed women took nothing from him but his pay envelope and a
Trakl
by Steve Luttrell Is sadness then the sound of a sonata the blue chill of loneliness, in the black nightfall sleep? The soft sound of the
Two Warblers
by Jonathan Skinner Cape May Dendroica tigrina your sharp, slightly decurved chestnut and gold horns striped at the throat black streaks speak
Window Watching at Midnight
by Karina Borowicz Again the circle of green light. My neighbor is sewing. With the two natures of a moth, his hands hover there, one futility
Words for Z
by Benjamin Aleshire I study my grandmother dying once a week for a few years. I am young and getting bigger every day She is shrinking steadily
You Can’t Miss It
by Franz Wright Most I loved the secret sense of being a we; of living in two places at once (or everywhere). How I learned to bear euphoria in
Spring 2010
August is Why
by David Filer There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons — — Emily Dickinson, Poem #258 Don’t take too much
Black Night—part of the collection, Shapes of Man
by Jeff Hardin (Phoenix, Arizona) You and I at the crossroads, One leading down the path of submission, The other pointing to still another
Charting
by David Filer The sad, lucent, malevolence of the heavens . . . — David St. John, Lucifer by Starlight The stars emerge at
Conquest: Turtle Island
by Renée Olander I. On the Bay this morning, not far from beach bathers who mostly gave it wide berth, a dead turtle washed up, like a whole
Elegy for a Crow
by James K. Zimmerman you’ve got a sick crow in your yard the neighbor said but I know this: crows don’t get sick and
Explore, Regardless—part of the collection, Shapes of Man
by Jeff Hardin (Phoenix, Arizona) Carrot of immortality, stick of perdition. Candles in cups, sprinkly waters in gaudy bowls. Smoke in bags,
Game
by J. B. Sisson In life’s peculiar game of hit or miss, whatever happens, you’re supposed to say, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Who
Hunched Over Shallows
by Jeff Hardin (Columbia, Tennessee) I must have looked ridiculous, hunched over the shallows, steering a red Solo cup behind the minnows
Jazz Night at the Museum
by Leonore Hildebrandt For the modernist, an egg shattered in the street. A heart? Straggling notes court the monkey tree. “It
Keeping the Pearls
by Renée Olander Those two creamy strands, their vague yellow tint increasing the value of the oyster’s irritation, cost an outrageous thousand
Knowing
by Alice Bolstridge All living, dying things I touch or see deceive my knowing — the world’s not me, it’s other: bear, rock, beech tree. Touching
Laysan Island
by Bill Edmondson Abandoned by a careless sailor Cast out on this verge of a dash Little larger than a sand bar They’re driven to shelter by
Lessons
by Susanna Lang — who would believe them winged — in memoriam Lucille Clifton Today your crows are nearly speechless. Only
Letter to Pavlov’s Dog
by Marija Sanderling How does it feel To live with this mad Russian On whom we pay homage For because of him And because of you We now know A
Lightning Bugs—part of the collection, Shapes of Man
Jeff Hardin (Phoenix, Arizona) Arrived late from a wedding, I walked outside to the porch Of her parents’ place, still dizzy, And lit a
Lotus Root
by Lynn Levin Loving the hard – to – love, I sought your human feet. At the Chinese grocery you lay in a bin pond – mucked like
Memory
by Renée Olander Whose bones ache in long – healed broken places? Whose bones remember, come damp or cold weather, The hardball hit into
Mouth
by Erica Goss What desires us most enters through the mouth: consider breath, with its vital repetitions; and if the esophagus is the top of a
Nigh
by Megan Grumbling Chance glistened in the blue spruce bower so near my doze: fresh champagne, suddenly, and one glass flute in wait. Fizzing
Opening in the Sky
by Preston Hood Before the dead crawl out, I stitch it up with the white line of my thinking & watch the sunrise. I enter the mist though a
Recognition
by Larry Dyhrberg There comes a moment In the life of Cherries, After the bright red, After the darkening And swelling into succulence, The mouth
Self Similarity
by Alice Bolstridge Veins map surfaces. In mayflower petals and leaves, they form boundaries of smaller and smaller patterns. Things branch —
Signs of the Season
by Henry Rappaport 1 Rosie says the bush is December thinks three weeks freeze got it is flip and sad at the half masts. Meanwhile, the sun
Skiing the Old Farm at Night
by Christopher Seid The ruts of my two skis fill with shadow, blue ash from the full moon’s burn. The dogs run ahead to wrestle ghost dogs
The Casualties of Where
by Henry Rappaport 1. The man with no legs looks at a map of the night, looks and wonders where he can go. He closes his eyes and looks at a map
This is a Wild Place
by Erica Goss On the last day of winter, my car, filled with chaff and spare parts, fits neatly in its painted slot, a motion box, stopped. The
Tonight
by James K. Zimmerman I lie between two pillows the whole bed is mine tonight you are not here I dream of
Ultrasound
by Megan Grumbling Have I heard of the allegory of the cave? he wonders, blue to me in pooled monitor lume, a dim room of insides, guess –
Victory, Wisconsin near the scene of the Bad Axe massacre
by Bill Edmondson Is not a town But commemoration Of blankety –blank A few two – story houses Some trailers a road Angling up
What Loneliness Can Do
by Bill Edmondson It can find you in a men’s room Uphill from the phallic shrine on Molokai Enter you enter a life or what it’s come to A
When Enos Slaughter
by David Moreau scored from first on a single to win the Cardinals the seventh game of the 1946 World Series the Boston shortstop got the blame —
While I Stride
by Megan Grumbling O me, while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever! . . . O to disengage myself from these
Winged
by Susanna Lang And if I do call the right name, if woodpecker is the name I’m searching for, then is the rapid drumbeat I hear down by the river
Winter 2010
A Song for Jack—for Jack Myers
by Andrea Blancas Beltran I knew a bird could sing but I never knew a bird had a song until you. The ease of your laugh, the way you
Able to Say It—missing Jack Myers
by Naomi Shihab Nye So, the years go by and we find a few doors and windows. Some are always open, some were never open. Because we are crazy and
Adagio For Strings
by Betsy Sholl The radio’s weeping again, this time without commentary, so it could be for anything, these strings brought to the breaking — for
After the storm,—for Jack Myers
by Daniel Nathan Terry graveyard flowers litter Shipyard Boulevard — petals of plastic and silk, stems of stiff wire. As we pass over the wind’s
Appetizers—for Jack Myers, 1988
by Mark Cox What I’d pay to see, the man says, is a bull elephant fighting a rhinoceros, and reaching for the smothered nachos, adds, now that
Blue Notes—Jack Myers, In Memoriam
by Sydney Lea Our good friend Mark forwarded your lovely “Cirrus” soon after you died. I’d have wept at it even if
Cesar Vallejo’s Night, 1892 – 1938
by B.Z. Niditch Night travels the field among a hundred days, your bed enters darkness on a bridge of departure from a poor man working dreams
Chandelier
by Joanne Lowery For lack of a better name, let us call this darkness “Klimt.” True, squares of white and gold tile his paintings, naked fish
Changes
by Harriet Sohmers Zwerling Now that I cannot do it alone, my tall son leads me into the chilly waters of the bay where I float above the jagged
Cirrus
by Jack Myers I’d like to leave a lighter imprint on the world than I’d formerly meant. Just a scent, not the thud of the thing steaming on a
Cloud, Backlit
by Jack Myers 6 a.m. March. Snow flurries. I’m stepping into the Atlantic, gulping fast, get –ready breaths so I can swim furiously, numb
Dear Jack
by Christopher Russell Hi Jack, is what I want to say. But at this moment there’s this little voice loving its perch, screwed into a reflection
Directions
by Norbert Hirschhorn My ancestors came from Africa, once, footprints preserved in volcanic dust, families walking side –by – side,
Eight Ball—for Jack Myers
by W.E. Butts There’s a Buddha on my desk, and he’s laughing. We of the West believe if you rub the Buddha’s belly, good fortune is certain. But
Entwined
by Carol Westberg It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. — Wallace Stevens Anxiety
Gone Fishing—for Jack Myers
by Andrea Blancas Beltran You never told me You were leaving When I asked. You just propped up Your fishing pole
he can’t be gone can he—for jack
by Christopher Soden word came days after at a poetry workshop consistent with the nature of our connection he was a friend rabbi father shaman
Hit & Run
by Betsy Sholl It wasn’t a Mac truck wanting me dead, just a blue car, young woman on the phone. Good, Biene — Biene — the license plate read. At
I Am Absent, But Deep In This Absence—after a line by Juana de Ibarbourou
by Leslie Ullman a prickling like tiny, almost downy cactus thorns that work their way through leather gloves sometimes settles at the
Jack The Believer
by Paul Christensen When Jack said getting his first real job (SMU in Dallas) saved his life, he was like an trapeze artist in the Cirque de
Jacob William
by Paul Christensen I was upstairs in Jack’s house on the flat suburban prairies north of Dallas, tossing among the words and muses of his little
Life on Earth
by Jack Myers During my life on earth, I loved being showered by the sun’s colored protons while seagulls screamed and days dredged back and
Meeting Robert Lowell
by B.Z. Niditch Into your creaking office with ivy toned wisdom carrying Catullus but fearing thirst and hell you were defenseless in a wizened
Mentor, we’re talking
by Alexander Etheridge Sudden winter, unfashionably cold rain — You may know this, changed now into everywhere by the shadow’s knick. And word
Misogi
by Daryl Morazzini While the world sleeps, I bath under cold flowing waters, hands clasped in prayer. The ancestral spirits
Moon
by Betsy Sholl It all comes down to one day glowing, one day gone, one day haloed mother, one day the hag, scythe in hand. So, what throw of the
Next Time
by Carol Westberg An eagle, the boy said, or a loon. Next time I might be moss or stone or a stream carrying on.
On Time
by Bruce Spang Do you hear the soft ohhs in the mist? These are sighs of God. They do not matter to the man — late, no doubt — who taps at his
Palimpsest—for Jack
by Michael Macklin Now freshly painted walls tremble in the hard light of November with secrets a carpenter scratched in framing pencil — No moon
Paradise
by Jack Myers In a program called Survivor Man, the host, after drifting five days at sea, washes up in paradise: there’s your coral reef, the
Passages—in memory of Jack Myers
by Marian Aitches 1 One by one, birds fly through the wide hall — shadows on fire – lit walls brighter than the
Plath to Her Scholars
by Joanne Lowery Girls, aren’t you the ones who under the guise of “get a life” subsist in universities with towers of my books piled on your
Precarious
by Leslie Ullman Balance in moving parts: the rider spurring her horse on a straightaway before she remembers to reach down and tighten the girth
Remains
by Jack Myers What’ll I do with my body when I’m dead? The best times I ever had were spent sailing in place so I vote for being buried. But I’ve
Rosy
by Patrick Dillon Once upon a time when yellow hens laid purple eggs, not long before she touched the car and went off into the photograph. high
Small Monuments to Fear—for Jack Myers
by Ariana Nash I have made a sister of a stone statue, who willows her head into her lap, bending over ferns. She wakes me up in the morning to
Song of the Slave Poets
by Patrick Dillon We go blind at the deskpit Fussing out our commas Feeling for something like a teapot That will contain everything. Life is
Stars—for Jack Myers, 1984
by Mark Cox Last night, like a match tossed off onto the lawn, it bloomed and disappeared. I kept smoking. And my dog kept nosing the damp
Sunrise on the Ohio River
by Jim McGarrah November 23, 2009 — for Jack Myers, teacher and friend In front of me silt and driftwood clip along driven by the current
The Allotments
by Patrick Dillon I see they’ve put a new McSorley in the ground along with all the McBrides and Hanrahans the Smiths and Smythes, as though in
The Drift
by Sandee Lyles We drift along and fail to notice What floats by much of the time Up and down, up and down We bob and grab for big stuff Likely
The Ethical Problem of Existence
by Richard Jackson What I thought was an ethical problem of existence was only just a broken heart.
The Guineas of Gardiner Creek
by Brad Davis There’s this old Manor, decrepit, ticky, patrolled by dappled tick – eaters clawking endlessly their grey, clown–
The Teenaged Poem—in memory of Jack Myers
by Suzanne Rhodenbaugh The soul of Nietzsche, the scruples of Alfred E. Neuman. After stanza one it yawns, picks its nose and farts. It takes a
This Scar—After a line by Fernando Lisboa
by Leslie Ullman Lord, forgive me if I don’t look for you beneath vaulted ceilings built by canonical money and generations of peasants sweating
Two comments on craft taken from his letters to Bruce Spang
Jack Myers — two comments on craft taken from his letters to Bruce Spang I. Form In my own writing, I strive to have all the
Two Rivers
by Robin Behn A tune by Larry Unger — for Jack Myers Two minds, side by side. Your two minds walking a road, a road that plunges
Untitled
by Ralph Angel Were you guilty of something your story would wear a black suit and come to an end. I leave you alone. I mop up the afterlife and
With Jack Myers in France
by Paul Christensen You were my guest in southern France once, with Thea fussing with car rentals on the phone, my wife fixing breakfast at the
Fall 2009
72 nd St.
by John Harris A summer sublet. 72nd St., Three stories up. An ancient railroad flat, Filled with listing bookcases, stifling heat, Uneven
A Vow
by Simon Pettet Each portion of perfect beauty is acutely noted, deftly remarked upon and not at all dismissed Clap hands mouth clichés. When did
Amo La Noche (The Night I Love)
by Laura Delia Quintero Garcia I love the night–lit passages that the roots take the labyrinth of dreams skeleton of time where I search
Apenas Ayer (Scarcely Yesterday)
by Laura Delia Quintero Garcia Apenas ayer nostalgia de hojas ahogado por el polvo atado bajo el sol ardiendo sueños olfateando nubes Ahora
Babel, Interuptus
by Kathleen Ellis At the Tower they are babbling again. A girl blurts out Beasts! for we are like them. We are not men or women of our word and
Baby the Crime
by Janice Miller Potter of a century happened just like that at your dad’s estate sale a snapshot of you at six months fell from a box that
Birdsong and the Old Night
by David J. Rothman Just before the dawn the songbirds sing As if they are so happy to be alive, Mused some idiot who didn’t know anything About
BRAND NEW SKINS
by Paul Muldoon I WAS PINNED ON THE HARD SHOULDER MY HEART WEIGHED DOWN BY A BOULDER THAT EASTER SUNDAY AFTERNOON MADDIE PULLED UP LIKE A GODDESS
Chapped Lips
by Cory McClellan I can’t talk to you anymore, annealing tunes of hypomania has made me thirsty. Home remedies for cracked vermilion: praying in
Devious in His Carpenter’s Pants
by Oliver Rice Suppose the doctor is running late. Suppose, meanwhile, extrospective, I cross the street, stroll into the park, wishing to be in
Eve of the Battle, Take II.
by Dan Murphy He’s hungry, I think and like a combine will eat anything. Wheat, grasshoppers. Dirt clods. Or like an ocean, swollen, its
from “The Bare Necessities”
by Simon Pettet Two oranges, incense, a little fire water Some tastefully–wilted flowers, A perpetually shining bowl Two cups
Guide
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc She led me in among the voiceless things. A long hallway, of course, and locked doors. She asked me to describe their pins
Hard Wood
by Jody Gladding Ash say ash a fire laid with three logs because a fire must
In the Gully
by Thomas R. Moore After I set my book aside and turned off the Sox in the fifth when Ortiz whiffed for the second time, I dreamed of whales,
In the morning I wake up with fear of life
by Dan Sociu In the morning I wake up with fear of life, At night I go to sleep with fear of death. And it doesn’t seem to portend a good day,
Lunar
by Jami Macarty Baja California Sur, Mexico 1. Limpets dangling from the backdrop — Here’s the
Maine Burial Plot
by Thomas R. Moore Granite posts square a God’s acre, a tiny plot of blueberries and asters beside a crushed– stone drive to three new
Melusina
by J. B. Sisson “You’ve got the breasts of a mermaid,” he said and added, “She just called. She wants them back.” A fantasy implodes with one
Memorize This Sentence for Casual Use in Conversation
by Taylor Mali If you were the type of person who could, without the slightest hesitation, open your mouth and utter forth one beautiful sentence
MOVING VIOLATION
by Paul Muldoon WE WERE BUMPER TO BUMPER DOWN BY THE OUTLET MALL YOU PUSHED THROUGH IN A JUMPER TWO SIZES TOO SMALL I CAN’T ISSUE A FINE LIKE A
Nervous Tic
by Cory McClellan It begins like a stutter in a nursery rhyme. Eye volumes fluctuate with capillaries colliding queries of lost keys against o r
Nesting Ravens
by Jody Gladding Yes nesting but you didn’t come here for a sign in the slate there’s a deeper question you
Ode to the Romance of the Thief
by Paula Cisewski But if he was hungry the thief or his children were hungry who said he has children better if he has the thief stealing the
Panic Grass and Feverfew
by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc After a quiet flash: a second sun rose and fell and flattened four square miles — half–grown potatoes cooked in the
Paper Birch
by Jody Gladding to read this I have to gather the pages it’s called a signature
Plenitud (Plenitude)
by Laura Delia Quintero Garcia Crisantemo de vértigo espino de placer galanadura deja que ahuyente tus inercias
Realidad (Reality)
by Laura Delia Quintero Garcia No fue un dolor previsto tampoco intuición premonitoria maduraba el amor como madura el aire con la fruta como el
Shared Premise
by Jami Macarty A spoon stirs inside a woman’s stomach. A woman is confused. A woman wants to be loved. A woman wants to fix what’s wrong. A man
Shock
by Cory McClellan Turn off the lights. Undress with caution. You’re wearing the electric touch of abandoned hair dryers. Drag your feet across
Some Musings in the Solarium
by Simon Pettet lizard sits on a rock lizard sits sun’s hot sun refracted to lizard through the spotlessly–clean high–rise
The Beast
by Steven R. Weiner The single throat in the painted wood car Screamed for adventure Defying gravity’s intense external response Rejoicing in the
The Bliss of Indigo Trees
by Richard Martin It pays to sleep in a warm room And review poor decisions Before nodding off The mind in a stew of mind Casts shadows of light
The Entire Act of Sorrow
by Taylor Mali Because men murder their wives every day; because when a woman dies and it looks like a tragic accident, a botched burglary or
The Explorer
by Mark Hedden It is so easy to forget what brings you here. For three years now I have been sitting in this room Listening to the sounds
The Fall
by David McCann All of it? Yes, all of it. I want all of it off. So he did it. This is what she paid him for, how he made a living. Her
The Great Green Wave
by David J. Rothman The snake still walks on his belly, The almond tree grows out of the ground Like black iron and men and women still love And
The way home is no longer the way home.
by Dan Sociu One night my wife and I carried ten bucketfuls of shit — I think we haven’t spent such a good time with each other since ’98: we
This Much
by Mark Hedden By catsup, by fish, by coffee bitter and black, My mind this morning a shredded cobweb. O Woman, lean back. Be quiet, one moment
Tulip
by J.B. Sisson In 1666 there lived a duke whose angels told him, “All the world is crude. Ignore the fools who call you Monsieur Prude. Proud
Urban Hymn
by Dan Murphy — Es mejor vestir Santos que desvestir borrachos
Ventriloquist
by John Driscoll, M.D. He whispered seamlessly to his wooden man whose lips moved, eyes bobbed and who was painted into a black suit effortlessly
What Bread to Eat
by Taylor Mali I don’t want to tell you what you already know so I won’t tell you you’re going to die. Even so there was a time when such a
What Must Be Done Again Today
by David J. Rothman It was a time of happiness. Each day The sky would open like a great blue wing. At night rain fell, a gentle rain. We
When I Suck Your Nipples
by Dan Sociu I’m a comic–book character — bubbles come out of my mouth inside which nothing’s written. — translated by Adam J. Sorkin, Dan
Will
by John Driscoll, M.D. This morning I sank into myself Putting aside the cigarettes and whiskey I dropped like a stone leaving but a vanishing
Summer 2009
24th March 2006
Juan Daniel Perotta 24th March 2006 All the horror today all the pain suffered Makes me become a child again brings back the sun A flag is being
A Photograph of Juan Gelman Dressed to the Nines
Sergio Ramírez A Photograph of Juan Gelman Dressed to the Nines I have seen the figure of Juan Gelman in formal attire bowing gracefully over a
Alone
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Alone you’re alone / my country / without the comrades you lock up and destroy /
An Appreciation: The Translator in Eight Movements — and a Coda
David Unger An Appreciation: The Translator in Eight Movements — and a Coda I. Hardie St. Martin was a remarkably inventive translator, who knew
Another May
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Another May when you went past my window may with autumn on your back and flashed
Archilochos in Baghdad
Doug Anderson Archilochos in Baghdad There is less noise now except in your head. The smirking rich have gone home with their take and left you
At the Hall of the Red Tlalocs
Efraín Bartolomé At the Hall of the Red Tlalocs 1 for Guadalupe Belmontes Stringel 2 1. I stroll the courtyards of Tepantitla like the
Attachment
Claribel Alegría I’ve been a very close friend of Gelman for many years and I admire him greatly. I am sending you a very short poem that I
Calls
Ernesto Cardinal Calls You can take the call you’ve been waiting for. The call that might tell you your number was the prize winner. You answered
CIII: I saw my country’s map in yellow one day
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin CIII: I saw my country’s map in yellow one day i saw my country’s map in yellow
Cólera buey
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Friends jiri wolker attila joszef me probably never three more perfect friends jiri
Com/Positions — (Paris, 1984-1985)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin The Prisoner gazelle / you’re far away / yet you’re closer to my bones than even i
Commentaries — (Rome, Madrid, Paris, Zürich, Geneva, Calella de la Costa, 1978-1979)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Commentary I (saint theresa) dear love going away like a bird stretched out over
Commentary II (saint theresa)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Commentary II (saint theresa) with my love running over and spilling/ all around
Commentary XXVIII (saint john of the cross)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Commentary XXVIII (saint john of the cross) many ways of remembering rise from
Deaths
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Deaths one day i watched death going by / she wasn’t on horseback / she was
DISAPPEARED/DESAPARECIDO
George Evans DISAPPEARED/DESAPARECIDO for Juan Gelman Anticipating someone might claim him one day the gravediggers left their ropes
Drawings of Sightlessness
Luis Cardoza y Aragon Drawings of Sightlessness Between pen and paper there is a celestial space where angels, stars, and clouds go by, in which
Elegy for Old Masters
Sam Hamill Elegy for Old Masters Suddenly old and once again sleepless, I rise in the night and slip outside and climb the steep narrow steps to
Facts — (Buenós Aires, Rome, 1974-1978)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Things They Don’t Know dark times / filled with light / the sun spreads sunlight
from Sleeping with Sappho
Stephen Vincent from Sleeping with Sappho 36. Andrew The joker dropped Melissa a dead letter ] Out of Delphi — without a prayer Indelicate Jane
Gotán
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Stuck in Paris The one I miss now is the old lion at the zoo, we always had coffee
If Gently — (Rome, January-March, 1980)
to Juan Carlos Cedrón Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin If Gently if waves from someone who threw himself into the
John Wendell’s Poems
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin CCLXI: These poems these poems this batch of papers this handful of fragments
Juan Gelman: The Music of Questions
Jorge Boccanera Juan Gelman: The Music of Questions Gelman’s poetic breathing has the music of questions. The clincher “Qué cuestión!” (“What a
Juan Gelman’s Exile
Ilan Stavans Juan Gelman’s poetry bears witness to the bankruptcy of Argentine morality. There’s a sense of urgency in it. Rather than
Life and Death
Juan Daniel Perotta Life and Death I write and take communion — I break the bread and drink wine — I promise myself to forget and not to plan To
No-Man’s-Land
Daisy Zamora No–Man’s–Land to the poets I love We are a minefield of clarity, and whoever crosses the barbed wire comes
Note III
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Note III walking on my bare knees through a field of broken glass / walking on my
Note V
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Note V don’t keep sadness away from the fireside / sit here beside me / old gal /
On the Soul Begins to Hurt
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin On the Soul Begins to Hurt Early on the soul begins to hurt / pale / in the
One Man’s Wake — (1961)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin The Art of Poetry Of all trades, I’ve chosen one that isn’t mine. Like a hard
Open Letter — (Paris, Rome, January, 1980)
to my son Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin IV: Crestfallen my burning soul crestfallen my burning soul dips a
Quiet at Last
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Quiet at Last quiet at last / so terribly alone / without kisses / my comrades
Reading Juan Gelman Poems over the Phone
Gioconda Belli Reading Juan Gelman Poems over the Phone I first met Juan Gelman at the craziest and most fantastic gathering of poets ever. It
Relationships — (Buenós Aires, 1971-1973)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Reds rain beats down on Río de la Plata and it’s going on 36 years since they
Southern Stars
Sam Hamill Southern Stars It is solstice, the beginning of summer, and almost New Year. I’m watching Esteban measure out each small shovelful of
Strike At The Construction Site
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Strike At The Construction Site Neither the strong noon wine they’d drink out in
The End
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin The End A man has died and they’re teaspooning up his blood, dear john, you’re dead
The Girl on the Balcony
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin The Girl on the Balcony The afternoon went down that street near the port making
The Judgment
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin The Judgment that grace time saw growing on your brow / time will reap / and will
The Mystic Warrior
Paul Pines The Mystic Warrior From where you sit Coatlique war is a flower spreading its petals over the land, a nuclear blossom. Pick me as you
The Name of the Game — (1956-1958)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin I Sit Here Like an Invalid I sit here like an invalid in the desert of my desire
The Swimming Pool at Villa Grimaldi
Martín Espada The Swimming Pool at Villa Grimaldi Santiago, Chile Beyond the gate where the convoys spilled their cargo of blindfolded
The Thief
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin The Thief In the night, so dark and quiet, shying away from everything human or
The Wages of the Profane — (Paris, Geneva, Mexico, New York, 1984-1992)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Courage to José Angel Valente Word that is extinguished when we breathe
To Juan Gelman
Gioconda Belli To Juan Gelman I think, Juan that we are a man and a woman wandering aimlessly through the world, with a muted question behind the
Two Juans: A Knowing Beyond Knowledge
Paul Pines Two Juans: A Knowing Beyond Knowledge “. . . i recognize your face\ like memory in every face . . .” Argentine poet Juan Gelman
Under Foreign Rain — (Footnotes to a defeat) (Rome, May 1980)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin XII My father came to America with one hand behind and the other in
Violin and Other Questions — (1956)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin Watching People Walk Along Watching people walk along, put on a suit, a hat, an
XI.
Susan Sherman XI. There is no way to imagine her final hours what she saw when she finally descended into that darkness she loved so well
XVI
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin XVI What really hurts me is our defeat. Exiles are tenants
XVI: Punishing loves
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin XVI: Punishing loves punishing loves / keeping sorrows down / from sun to
XX: Those who created God
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin XX: Those who created God those who created god with one or two men or converted
Yamanocuchi’s Poems — (1968)
Selected Poems of Juan Gelman translated by Hardie St. Martin IV: The sun on the day’s crest the sun on the day’s crest gilds points of land
Spring 2009
Beloit Poetry Review
Quickening the Senses — Lee Sharkey Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published
Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women
Women Make Their Voices Heard through Calyx — Beverly McFarland, with AliceAnn Eberman Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The
Free Lunch: A Poetry Miscellany
Editing Poetry: Time Well Spent — Ron Offen Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal
Hunger Mountain
A Swipe of the Net — Caroline Mercurio Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published
Lilliput Review
Resonance & Revelation — Don Wentworth Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal
Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry
The Measure of Poetry — Rob Griffith Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published
Oak Bend Review
Oak Bend Review: A Plainspoken Little Journal — Sandee Lyles They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. —
Rattle
Making Rattle Rattle — Timothy Green Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published
Simpatico Poets Press
The Active Voice — Daniel Kerwick Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal published
The Asheville Poetry Review
The Final Frontier: Honoring The Condensery — Keith Flynn Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from
The Broome Review
What Makes a “Good” Poem? — Andrei Guruianu Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal
The Café Review
Poetry as Process and Product — Steve Luttrell Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The Café Review is different from our normal
The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine
Poetry and Perception: Publishing The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine — Tim Monaghan Quick Note about this issue: This Editor’s Issue of The
The Spoon River Poetry Review
Letters to the World — Bruce Guernsey This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me — — Emily Dickinson Quick Note about this issue: This