Tag: 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

Very excited that Khadijah Queen will be a 2025 Visiting Writer at Longleaf Writers Conference this year. I am reading her poetry collection, Anodyne (Tin House Books, 2020). "In the event of an apocalypse, be ready to die," the opening poem in the collection, proves  prescient for today's reader: "But do also ... 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

Enjoying "Eros and Sorrow" in Patrycja Humienik's poetry collection, We Contain Landscapes (Tin House): "I'm crying after sex. Kettle's going off / and off—the arrows in that / sound could puncture even steel. / I pour slowly, opening a curtain / in the back of mind...." ... 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

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

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

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

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

"Poetry is one of the three major genres of imaginative literature, which has its origins in music and oral performance and is characterized by controlled patterns of rhythm and syntax (often using meter and rhyme); compression and compactness and an allowance for ambiguity; a particularly concentrated emphasis on the sensual, ... Read More

Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 by Lucille Clifton Lucille Clifton is a big inspiration for my poetry. As a former professor at my alma mater, St. Mary's College of Maryland, I've heard a lot about Lucille Clifton these past four years, and for good reason. I admire ... 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

 COVER Le Baiser du lait D’oubli  | CENDRINE ROVINIFICTIONWild Things | ANITA FELICELLIFRANZ KAFKA AWARD IN MAGIC REALISM1st Place | Dream State, MARK JACOBS2nd Place | Empty Spaces, STEPHANIE FRAZEE 3rd Place | Mothers | CARMEN MACHADOPOETRY7 Poems | KRISTINA MARIE DARLINGNONFICTIONDiss Leave | LYNDEE YAMSHONGALLERYAnima Mundi | CENDRINE ROVINIMother May I? | RAE BRYANT Paperback (available April 1st), eBook, Pdf, Epub, Mobi and MobileIncludes Franz ... Read More

Sand fleas leap the sunset where Carmaggeden occupies the freeway. On the muddy banks of the Mississippi, we slip mickeys to bums on benches. Pop and I: waxing life in the freight yard, where barley stinks like wet dog food,And where we tag dumpsters, stare up at the Arch, that ... Read More

by Emily Tuttle Your eyes are made of grappling hooks,places where strangers have latched themselvesto the hollows of your cheekbones.I reached out,never once thinking when I threw my line that it would catch,thin wire hooked to the craters of your skin…Now my gaze is caught in yours,tangling over strands of ... Read More

Love is not understanding.Love is wrapping the aperture of an eye inside your ribcage.It is imagining. Audrey and I are fertile, mother.We trail our newborns behind us.            Fully formed and watertight.            They have no eyes to stop up. Her infants ... Read More

An eagle swooping, All the little birds stand still. Full moon comes tonight. Wind in city trees, An old woman stands watching. Flower petals fall. Storms chase passing ships, A green wave and a blue one. Shadows perch on limbs. Paddles dip, circle. I watched you cross the water. Do ... Read More

Eckleburg No. 19Original Work by Julia Kolchinsky DasbachRegendered by Eckleburg Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach came to the United States as a Jewish refugee in 1993, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of ... Read More

by Emily TuttleWhen the artist decided she wanted children/she took a cavern of her hip...,Emily Tuttle is pursuing her degree in English, with a minor in neuroscience, at the University of Maryland. She is involved with the creative and critical journals on campus and is an editorial assistant at Poet ... Read More