Poetry

It’s Taxing, isn’t it?

It’s taxing isn’t it, not being in a real room anymore.

It’s like being in a virtual belly of a newly discovered underwater beast, water-handled, and mucked.

It is taxing, feeling so beneath the surface, so damp under the waterline. What is the measure of success now? 

There’s the bravado on the one side, and the blood-soaked climax on the other.

What tries, what edges forward, what renders lyrical, that is the threat of not-being in this Time of __________. 

In unconscious grouchiness

In unconscious grouchiness
In unconscious grouchiness
 
Sometimes you fall through the ice
to the bottom of the pond
 
Other times you’re in a faraway city 
like Austin or L.A.
 
Each time you’re majestic 
and forgivable, at least to me
 
Standing tall up against 
the trunk of a silver maple 
 
Its branches a bird nest halo 
for your future heavenly form.
 
Death Poem
 <

Four Prose Poems

What If a Little Bone
 
Say that god is out to lunch. What if a wasp settles on the fried chicken. What if god gets
a little bone stuck in his throat and coughs up an alternate universe. We’re living in it,
aren’t we? What if god forgets how he jury-rigged us in the first place. What if the spine
is a ladder and the tongue a rope. Some days you climb the rungs, other days you make
the noose.

Four Poems - Lisa Simmons

Poetry
The Towers 
 
I
 
When had you seen stillness of that measure before?  
The shadow of the leaves, so distinct,
etched onto the wall by sun.  
When had you seen skies so blue?
You had drawn them with finger paint in class
but not without a requisite cloud; cloud as clue
to what you were looking at, as blue so uninterrupted
might be confused with the sea.
 
II
 
I rode the elevators

Five Poems - Ruth Vinz

Midnight Swing
Just Imagine
 
“The moon is blue cheese,” my mother says, beams
of moon sharpen her smile as her hand flashes another push of our
granddaughter into the night sky. Who goes for a midnight swing
except a grandmother when a great granddaughter asks?
 
The swing cuts through air, suspended. Glistening against moonlight
our granddaughter’s auburn curls wave in the glow. A tingling hum
of chirping in the distance. Up she goes again.

Five Poems - Aleksey Porvin

Bread and Salt

People do not welcome the marching ranks

with bread and salt—only a manure pile

sprinkled with white snow recreates the image

of hospitality that has lived for centuries.

 

Birds circle above the border, then

stretch into a line, lifting the frontier

into the winter air, not expecting the shot

that will scatter them to the corners of longing.

 

Five Poems - Anton Yakovlev

I Hope You’re Wonderful

These days, if I make my bed, I see your heart

untucking itself from my pillow and falling out

onto the defunct horse farm I only pretended to own

 

when you were around. Our respective continents

drift past each other in a planet of blood. You were

too beautiful to wear anything, and so you took off

 

my sunglasses. Now I live in the blinding weather

Five Poems - Olena Jennings

KNIFE

the knife to cut the beet 
from the garden the red 
dye against my skin 
the shiny metal blade 
your job is to wash 
the knife your job 
is to prevent me 
from coming close 
to the sharpness 

we took on certain roles 
in the house 
you cut the meat 
while I cut the vegetables 
the stains were varied 
yours a thin scarlet 
and mine bleeding green 
I later pulled a needle 
through cloth 

Subscribe to Poetry