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Poetry

Band-Aids and Rabbit Holes by Hillary Kobernick

In the end we die. In the meantime dust collects in corners. I offer the folds of my brain as burrows for snakes and rabbits. I keep Band-Aids in back pockets for when the disasters come. Reminders not everything is fixable.   I book hotel rooms and make the unfixable sleep with the already fixed. … Read more

Ebony Body by Geraud Erren Kelly

She chills to pac p biggie bone Because black pride is a special thing And aping one’s culture Makes her feel less guilty about her Own She is rail thin stocky pleasantly Plump Around the middle sometimes Down home pale with freckles Rarely Hollywood tan Maybe New England alabaster Just enough accents around the breasts … Read more

Bling Bling makes Webster’s Dictionary by Erren Geraud Kelly

She was surprised when I told her I’d been to Europe “Why’d you get so excited about going there?” she said   I told her I wanted to be somewhere Where I didn’t feel American She claimed she listened to Hip hop   But long skirts told me She belonged to god She screwed up … Read more

Placenta by Josette Akresh-Gonzales

I lie on my back on my sheets on my bed— the baby a regret, the pains a regret. What was full inside is now outside, on my breast. The baby slick with blood, the blood like a river, the fluid that circulates, carrying food and water and breath and bringing away waste from all … Read more

As We Said, No Promises by Rane Arroyo

Juan Angel is jealous that I’m sleeping with a new trickster,                         but   JA and I will be buried together.   Others may join us in the only matrimonial bed legally allowed us. Rane Arroyo was a gay, Puerto Rican performance artist, playwright … Read more

If Basho Taught High School by James Dickson

* A girl with Chanel earrings asks me a question about Emerson.   * Test: the eraser ends of their pencils dance like little dervishes.   * The autistic kid finds God in the right angles of the hall’s lockers.   * A martyred French fry: foot-flattened and filthy on the lunchroom floor.   * … Read more

Alive by Holly Day

they found her small body wired into the heart of the church, small LEDs sprouting through her skin blooming like tiny red flowers too far deep for sunlight to reach. she was sheared clean through to bone by claws big enough to belong to the God hanging over the spot her mangled body lay.   … Read more

Impossibleness of Abstract Representation by Holly Day

where are we now? one man asked we shone our flashlights around the cave saw only stone, tall ceilings, dark passages darting off in every direction. The map showed us which random tributary would take us back to sunlight, although it was hard to believe that we were somewhere on that flat piece of paper, … Read more

The Catch by Judith Pulman

When you were ten you caught a fish and showed your parents that pink flesh. They whooped loud, mercury eyes! Silver guts! That day all guzzled more than enough. and that night, you grasped a new way to sit that made the family round and perfect. All your thoughts from that day on were mother, … Read more

Where have the Parents Gone? by Judith Pulman

I have sought them at the close of day. In the basement, living room, and the foyer— They’re gone. So is the house, sold to monks who pray For suffering’s cessation and stolid abstinence From attachments. But I loved them, my parents Who let me abide and gave me a chance To ride on their … Read more

The Tappan Zee by Heather Macpherson

Approaching the Tappan Zee Bridge I see a green highway sign reading “Life is Worth Living” with a phone number below. I ask my husband, “Do you think a lot of people jump off the bridge attempting suicide?” At first he says, “Probably,” which leads to, “I don’t know; it’s not that high above the … Read more

The Fall by Rochelle Germond

I. Our pastor talks about cherubim on Easter Sunday. Cherubim, you say, like little angel babies, like cupid with his arrows, like paintings by Michaelangelo. When we look it up, we find out that cherubim guard the gates of Eden, protecting paradise from you and me. II. The condom breaks. Thin latex stretches, shatters statistics: … Read more

It Will Leave by Casey Fuller

when you are gone and what you recall about where you’ve been and who you’re with will close down from the full size of your sight to a small circle pushed by a pin and for one brief second before it changes in the light still yellowing through a single hole every last thing will … Read more

Felicitous by Rochelle Germond

We sit on the tablecloth, junebug green with splotches of white daisies or wildflowers or tulips, indistinguishable in the dark of the icebox night, the sky injected with dim clouds in the spaces where stars should be. There are no more seats at the picnic tables that speck the side yard of the coffee shop. … Read more

Long Distance Relationship by Rochelle Germond

Now that you’re gone, I sleep in the middle of the bed, my head swallowed by the crease where the pillows meet. I eat the whole dessert, or none at all, ignore the buy-one-get-one-free deal on Publix ice cream when I go to pick up dinner for one. Now that you’re gone, I use your … Read more

Seven Layers by Rochelle Germond

We fall asleep with our foreheads pressed together, the way our palms should be. Maybe this is how we’re so much the same, how our thoughts twine and twist, loop together like the shoelaces I fumbled with when I was six years old. Each time our tongues are wrapped I wonder why my words don’t … Read more

The Turquoise Urn by Ann E. Michael

for June You start in the usual way, centered, earth spinning on the wheel. You have to consider volume, the space required to contain or embrace—as you so often have— the beloved body, reduced in the kiln, vitrifying memory and affection in the glaze, hardening the walls your hands draw up from clay as they … Read more

After I Couldn’t Grind With Sylvia Ramos by Joe Benevento

in Kerry Cannon’s basement, his cut-up-glow-paper walls surrounding us with so many smug stars and planets, while the Friends of Distinction slow-sung “Going in Circles” to emphasize the irony: I a freshman at Cathedral Prep in a dark room recognizing no priesthood beyond what I might sanctify by pressing Sylvia’s present willingness tight through me, … Read more

Dr. Frankenstein’s Lament by Dorene O’Brien

Blame that last flash and clap, tumultuous, explosive, as if the skies themselves feared what he did not yet see: the yellowed eyes, the protruding brow, green skin stretched like rough canvas over a hasty marriage of joint and bone. When that light rent the night’s dark skirts the stars themselves hid from the monstrosity … Read more

Costume Closet by Sarah White

I throw away the slacks of solitude socks of solitude leggings bloomers crinoline chemise lace bib buckram ruff jerkin over-blouse of solitude sash cummerbund foulard raincoat great-coat cape poncho parka shawl shawl top hat tiara beret fedora cloche of solitude girdle garters corset half-slip pajama robe kimono night-gown wrapper slipper sandal Stop I’ll keep the … Read more

Gacela of Moonshine by Tanya Ko

I want to dance like her on the crowded floor I want to writhe in music guiltless as a child I want eternal blood circulating like a halo I want to dance like a rising sun in Death Valley. I do not want to live like a shadow in my life I refuse to numb … Read more

One Foreign Summer Day by Tanya Ko

The sun is going down—disappearing like me. I, holding on to the light, the last capture of my sight.  Soon my blood will spurt like a burst pipe over the warm summer field. The greedy animal will satisfy his thirst. Go ahead, eat me, eat all of me. Do not tranquilize me. Do not close … Read more

Second Period by Tanya Ko

I got called in to a little dark room, windowless. Mrs. Lopez showed me a picture book. Khang, I say. No, river, she says. Liver, I say. Not liver, it’s river, she says. That’s what I said, river, river, river, khang— It’s a khang! She shook her head. Look at my mouth, she says, RRRRR … Read more