Category: Poetry

Home is not the root of human the way root is the seed of radical. A home can be a human wrong and cold like ice unsweetened unshaved ... Read More

"...so I asked Him, 'Why do I exist?' not expecting an answer, not liking what He said." "But it set you apart," said Anne, passing the sugar. Rebecca smiled and took two ... Read More

My father built homes for settlers in the West Bank. For who knew when the next Hitler would rise? My father would turn the tide like a god, surprise from a slight five foot nine inch Jew ... Read More

His two sons talk in the back of the cave where they've buried this honorable man. He tried to kill me, said I had to be sacrificed. He threw me out, said I should die with my mom in the desert ... Read More

shi in Japanese means death / herself reflected / his singular possessive projected by the he who (doer of the sentence) substitutes affection Kathleen Hellen in other words indefinite/not quite determined / not that or this but object of the proposition Kathleen Hellen we not interrogating / pleasures of a ... Read More

I was born in Philadelphia's Temple Hospital, Jewish & full of the devil & the demerol they gave my mother perfection in satin & manicured popping gum & smoking such fun at 24 & pissed for sure at what they said was a girl. She dropped her ashes on my ... Read More

"Closed all the windows to the heat     How still Frances at this time of day     How still I      Feeding you means sitting means my body does my work    I’m so hot with you against me the way it used to feel in New York in ... Read More

So it spelled Dumbell instead of Umbell. Infuriating, after she’d twice corrected the error by email.  Everyone wants to mess with what’s yours, make an ass out of a cluster ... Read More

Ann Lewis is the author of Inside Out: Meet Mama Schizophrenia, a debut poetic memoir of loving and living with a parent diagnosed with schizophrenia. A world traveler, she lived in South Africa and Argentina and now lives on the Gulf Coast where she teaches literature ... Read More

smoke             cinder                           ash dye job from hell calls Putin “Daddy” spellbinding back tat-- a forest of impossibly tall trees with dark squid-like branches loves Billie “Eyelash” possesses                   a wicked                                    left hook ... Read More

They lock you up and feed you clouds. Cumulus candy puffs. Cirrostratus and Nimbostratus gummies. You float on delicious filaments. So much wonder. Silvery minnows of the mind. Nets for the careless. Stippled with black floaters ... Read More

she is under the rice fingers poking up through the water playing air piano are fish allowed to swim the paddies? they should be flashes of koi gold among rich green every hillside a rice aquarium with jazzy flowing fish and rice fit for a Sumo wrestler who secretly yearns ... Read More

last days of autumn have fallen on your fragrant locks like honey rust clouds in the distance rolling toward the Rio Grande at Pilar trout are biting rattling the snakes behind every rock ... Read More

star bride on the beach paging Pierre Reverdy firecrackers in dubious battle overhead not even close to dark She yearns La Mordida the Frat boys mirrored along the strand ... Read More

Alexa Doran is a poet, a mother, and a PhD student at FSU. She has recently been featured or is forthcoming in CALYX, Gertrude Press, The James Franco Review, Juked and scissors and spackle literary magazines. One of her poems about Dada artist Emmy Hennings recently won first place in ... Read More

we still played with dolls when names were multiplied.... Helena García Mariño, Madrid (Spain), 1990. She studied Law and Political Science and Comparative Literature in Madrid, Spain. She’s graduated in May, 2017, in the MFA in Spanish Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. She´s currently working on her first ... Read More

chuck palahniuk was buddha the late show host sang lullabies.... Helena García Mariño, Madrid (Spain), 1990. She studied Law and Political Science and Comparative Literature in Madrid, Spain. She’s graduated in May, 2017, in the MFA in Spanish Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. She´s currently working on her ... Read More

my mother decides that sundays are the day for broken things. the week dies into cracks and i need to learn to suture it.... Helena García Mariño, Madrid (Spain), 1990. She studied Law and Political Science and Comparative Literature in Madrid, Spain. She’s graduated in May, 2017, in the MFA ... Read More

by Kia Alice GroomAlice SometimesSleep-wasted, I shake out dusk. Evening is for solo-exploration, for lying naked on the fresh made bed. My body is tinsel coat, my body is a blue dress punched from sky.Kia Alice Groom is founding editor of Quaint Magazine. The recipient of an Academy of American ... Read More

by Jessica Lanay Let's avoid the metaphor where the page is the universe, and I am God, and the graphite to the white paper is some kind of explosion.... Jessica Lanay is a poet and short story writer originally from the Florida Keys. She is interested in writing towards the ... Read More

i am no bird./i am no/delicate song-maker,/no fragile feather-clump.... Nicole Hylton is a writer-of-all-trades from Southern Maryland. She writes poetry, short stories, and has completed two novellas, Internet Official and Dropping Her Gloves. Her work has appeared in Aethlon and Avatar. She holds a B.A. in English from St. Mary's ... Read More

by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach Yom HaShoah: April 19, 2012 I forgot to light a candle for them, I tell my husband, ask him to remember./He answers: Dick Clark died. It was all over the radio. Remember him?  Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years ... Read More

I walk the constellations / like ferries slide the line / from dock to dock / the clockwork of my days . . . Katy E. Ellis is a poet, freelance writer and teacher through Seattle Arts & Lectures' WITS (Writers in the Schools) program. Her poetry has appeared in ... Read More

Hey, you knew the score / walking out in that dress / I can see all that you're worth / The declining value of spent bodies   cheap metal clanking in the machine . . . . Dorothy Bendel is the author of Expatriate (Finishing Line Press). Her work can be found ... Read More

start with you: silvered eyes that made / me. a violet knee, a sucked neck. heavy . . .  Charlotte Covey is from St. Mary's County, Maryland. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. She has poetry published or forthcoming in ... Read More

We are in the far country, / green pastures and a scatter / of stars. Morning! /  The water clobbered with light . . . Amanda Sharon often thinks about the cylindrical nature of time, the illusion of fear, and ancient cultures. She currently lives in Columbus and studies at The ... Read More

You and your paddle-boat-mate are on a paddle boat at sea, which, according to the owner’s manual, is “not recommended.” You toss the owner’s manual overboard . . .  Jenelle Clausen received an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University and resides in Madison, Wisconsin. She drafts poems on ... Read More

John F. Buckley has been writing poetry since March 2009, when his attempt at composing a self-help book went somewhat awry. After twenty years in and around California, he now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife. His publications include various poems, two chapbooks, the collection Sky Sandwiches, and ... Read More

Mark DeCarteret has appeared next to Charles Bukowski in a lo-fi fold out, Pope John Paul II in a high test collection of Catholic poetry, Billy Collins in an Italian fashion coffee table book, and Mary Oliver in a 3,785 page pirated anthology ... Read More

Oh, how overdone/I am, swamp-logged,/blue-lipped. Poets/invoke my pickled virginity....Amanda Williamsen has recently relocated to Bainbridge Island, Washington, where she plans to write a poem for every day that it rains, and maybe for some sunny days, too.  She is lately of Cupertino, CA, where she served briefly as that city’s ... Read More

the night is large tonight               ants mistake our legs for old fallen branches & simply crawl                without violence   I tell you that a poem               is a gasp of words like my breath on your cheek & that everything before you ... Read More

Christina M. Rau is the author of the poetry chapbooks WakeBreatheMove (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and For The Girls, I (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Founder of Poets In Nassau, a reading circuit on Long Island, NY, her poetry has appeared on gallery walls in The Ekphrastic Poster Show, on car magnets for The Living ... Read More

The September swelter fell upon the woods unexpectedly, and the man who found it picked it up and said, “Now what the hell is this thing?” The scientists said: “Put that down.” “You don’t know where it’s been.” One of them looked like his mother, white coat out of season, ... Read More