a whole horse half heartedly a roiling mew of a maw maze of maximum hunger scrutinized under security liable to topple the regime of grasping at straws. stave off to starve aloft felt left bird flaws flu is turning to pigs could fly filling sty eyes with red tears done dry green bills folded neatly quacked left to talk amongst themselves. unpacked they fly … Continue reading Three Poems by Myl Schulz
Hate Is Unbecoming His dreams are of the next sex vacation. Average bodies permitting anonymity that I can’t stomach. My fantasy is that I’ll find another little circus in a parking lot. A broken Zoltar machine in Baltimore one winter, I fed it quarters anyway and wished him out of my blood, wished myself tougher, more relevant by which I mean the … Continue reading A Poem by Krystal Languell
The Sacrilegious Axe The sun lighting votives so nature can smack her flower into first-aid for metaphors they go, I go kill a few mobsters no age restrictions milky coffee sprawled on the stoop as if dawn weren’t a fork bearing in on the urge for aphorisms I can make myself assuming I know the business of scintillas and beware the death futons … Continue reading Two Poems by Jessica Dessner
An Excerpt from Outside Inside, a Memoir A berth at Grand Haven had been dead Paul Blackburn’s gift to us. A teaching position at Thomas Jefferson College of Grand Valley State Colleges in Annandale, Michigan. TJC. I thought it was weirdly ironic. Baz and Paul had spent a long evening together when Paul was first offered a teaching job at Cortland. I heard … Continue reading A Berth in the Haven
discrete conjecture between physicians— their richer philological blunders quickened the cure corkless substances wafted on the sinews— your body’s cordage tightens against the doc’s jostling your gored cocoon balances the room’s minuter barometric measurements ** this inscape is more picturesque than you remember—what a spectre! axles resist lifting indurated by an artless disease (wring an entomology from the beautiful slide foresooken just in time … Continue reading Two Poems by Lara Candland
two from Wear You to the Ball entered out of sun spectrum to entubed sight “the fashion-plates need to get off at Powell Street” me I’m staying on this train not so far as its terminus but to where the ball of sun its display comes laced with particulate matter off ocean’s englobing water and sound system why humans’d even try to … Continue reading Two Poems by Steve Dickison
Queer Power Swish, swish, men of America. Cross your legs only at 90-degree angles. Swish, swish! Your fingernails are getting a mite too long. Swish, swish! That fuchsia shirt might be misunderstood. Swish, swish! You’d better lower your pitches and say something evil about your mothers. Swish, swish! You smell too sweet and are too polite. Be crude. Swish, swish! Talk about war, not … Continue reading Four Poems by Louie Crew
The Big Tree through the Open Door Only the under- layer sees itself & it adjusts easily to the mirage If I could sit with my foot touching your foot we could sit in the closet with the light’s string hanging between us & you can be the one who gets to turn it on & off. Sentinel The strategy resounds … Continue reading Three Poems by Jackie Clark
‘standing’ ‘walking’ as present — huge crows loaded a tree (past) by me — at night sleeping — yet the half-cracked black bud (night: only) and thin blue sky, but as being oneself only, aren’t existing either single thin wall, waves thousands in the freezing sky and empty fields — and loaded on tree by me — night is half-cracked black bud in one: as, … Continue reading An Interview with Leslie Scalapino
A/M Struggle with the orange juice container. Lack of voice to ask for assistance. Perception of one’s hands, one, then the other; the same? Sensation of dryness– outside. Inside, something like dryness, but swollen. Act of imagination involving other possible outcomes, sets of ulterior movements. Reevaluation of motives in the act of choice. Clarification of moral positions. Justification of chance events through assertion of … Continue reading A Poem by Matvei Yankelevich
from Insurgentes Booed-ism Ordered mind answers itself: ick! spittle! from booths in a café littered with expats about to be blown to detritus. Where were you, far from that? There’s elephant offal for sale over there; here only thoughts of “confiscatory” taxes grinding the minds of bloated emoticons, rubber latrines sunk deep into Disco Nap. Symmetry wobbles & persons aforementioned freak them- selves … Continue reading Two Poems by Marc Nasdor
A room there are amazements / you like to stray into and / my body’s only one of them ‒Rosmarie Waldrop A room affords confinement, panopticon, its exotic formulae: a mode of detour and “lawless imagination” A gap widens leaving both air and breath gasping She prepares his tea. She promises an end. What he always wanted. Narrative dancing in its own embrace … Continue reading Three Poems by Marthe Reed
The Knife Say high to your mom because the stars blink for us parenthetically crooked like blow on a mirror. This is a passion pit full of sleepyheads that edges over a sociological pulpit as dense as Tecate on the tongue without a lime. What else is there? Royksopp. Understand me anywhere you look. Still night is still life. My moon, my man, it’s time … Continue reading Four Poems by Jake Levine
The Captain (1) The captain is quiet in his cabin Smiling at the man who pronounced terroir At his table as though the Pommerol, Supine and primeval would certainly Tear the throats of those not from the region He’s wondering this night about nothing Having checked his course carefully and well Besides, there’s so much radar equipment On his own deck and those passing … Continue reading Three Poems by Cynthia Kraman
by Joshua Wilner Suppose one were to approach Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal as a radical complement to William’s efforts to demonstrate that “there is no essential difference between the language of poetry and the language of prose.” Suppose, that is, one were to view the pages of her journal as participating in a history of experimental prose that includes such figures as De Quincey, … Continue reading Experimental Prose and the Reconfiguration of Incestuous Bonds: from the Grasmere Journal to Tender Buttons
Part I For a voice level, say something. My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense. Keats? The first line of “Ode to a Nightingale.” Wow. I would not have expected you to quote one of the Romantics! Keats is where I got my start. He’s my guide in a sense: his enameled surface and below that the longing and loss. That … Continue reading Interview with Robert Glück
by Barbara Henning With Harryette Mullen’s dense, layered and playful poems in Sleeping with the Dictionary, there is often a subtle question, almost present but not quite present, a riddle-like structure that leaves the reader wondering: How did she make this poem? As a prep for an MFA course I was teaching at Long Island University in the summer of 2009, and as a project … Continue reading Conversation with Harryette Mullen: From B to D
Ars Poetica I What is it you want? I used to know. Has it changed? No. What it is you want? Love. To be loved. Has it changed? Love? Yes. It has. What is it you want? To be brilliant. Effortlessly brilliant. Has it changed? I never got that. What is it you want? To be charming. Handsome. Has it changed? I … Continue reading Two Poems by Jason Schneiderman
from [Husband] for k. now, wife, get in your little boat and row and row away into sleep remember, the tales insist upon including a ghost and a body of water but since they are a translation we don’t know what they insist upon really I want and want and this wanting is a trap if you tried and failed in … Continue reading Two Poems by Jennifer Bartlett
WHAT AM I NOT A MAKER Is it possible to know you must apologize with everything you have for offering the perfect gift? How could that even feel? It sounds occult. I want it, and somehow I speak for everyone. It’s beautiful. I know it’s beautiful. You don’t need to write So beautiful. I’m trying to know I’m … Continue reading A Poem by Macgregor Card