Action Origami
How much can you do with one piece of paper— creasing, tearing, adding volume with air? You can make a mythic sea monster toppling a tall ship in high, high seas, as my seatmate in 30C, in … Continued
Poetry
Circum-Navigation
The boats return Heavy from cities and distance. The crickets fall asleep. A child listens to the hollow of a conch. Perhaps it is the moment for another trip At the bow, for certain, the … Continued
@danajaye
i’m the little parakeet girl her caged and useless beat her flight of wings i’m the fire breathing kitten feather green and flame baby panther dragon scaly cat the way she purrs you back again i’m the … Continued
The Denison Homestead
Caring is a disease passed on My grandpa stood here and my dad imagined him doing so, and I am here to pay my respects to the love my dad had for him Buy a tee shirt … Continued
You Whom They Border
you border crosser in this simulation you constantly slip and call one border by the other’s name the names aren’t straight inside of you and you conflate one with two because you still yearn for another border … Continued
Up Up
The elocution lessons have been a great success! It is a matter of biting and swallowing. Clean bites and frequent sorrows. It’s so terrible—nothing is the god of me. I’m a grassy pit, I’m organized around nothing, a … Continued
Why Not Minot
The welcome arch read Only the Best Come North & my parents laughed tongue-in-cheek at another cross-country Air Force move. In fifth grade, I learned about America & the Dakotas & the Cold War & elections as Reagan … Continued
First Period
Brave Mrs. Kenley turns her back on the first grade, and like a grass fire, from raw blade to raw blade, enmity spreads. Mr. Hawkins twists paperclips around his knuckles. Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Hall sit at their … Continued
White Deer
I saw the white deer in the clearing. I lowered my bow. That planets don’t collide on a more regular basis is one of the wonders of, say, sleeping through the night. The white deer bent its head, browsed … Continued
To Make Sense of This Poem
a poem from TLR’s Babel Fish issue by Matthew Rohrer: “All you need to make sense of this poem..”
What the Eclipse Taught Me ||| Pittsburgh Poetry Review
If you get five out of six numbers correct in the lottery, you’re still a loser. –Fred Espenak, “Mr. Eclipse” 88% is a lot, nearly the whole xxxxthing. The black moon sliding over the sun like a manhole xxxxcover, a … Continued
Ceramic Lamp with Cursive Message ||| BOMB
The lamp in the borrowed room said, “This Is It!” We meant otherwise, and the room said no this is it. There are ways to code intensity on the brain like a map, like the lamp placed in the kiln, … Continued
Ode In This Condition ||| Boston Review
Praise for this wending, this bearing beginning. The least stuck is groaning, the most has given in. Words a rotted barn, full of must and straw and animals sleeping. I want to dream with you the mountainsides, the beaches, the … Continued
Discountry ||| Radar
A wooded, bloodied word, a dozing black daisy. Into you out of my head how many times, out of air and earthward, bird with no throat, bird unopened. Unencumbered of my desire, your arms free of the frozen stream. To … Continued
Ante Matter ||| Drunken Boat
Pretty good work if you can get it, making paradises in abandoned banks stony exterior, marble interior, the registers like a failed carillon (toneless) striking all hours at all hours. Every noon the ghost attendants ghost-walk up to the kiosk, … Continued
Of Mule and Deer ||| Boston Review
Out of a tin-cold, murmuring black wood Lightly you lope, pale deer, lifting A story from pages of snow Nothing turns in your eye they say Toward the tin-cold and murmuring black wood I bear a display case of blue … Continued
Lake Surfing At Whitefish Point ||| Michigan Quarterly Review
This is Polynesia in the mitten, hidden past the trailers where iron sky meets iron water. We tread beaches like two lovers tread the bedroom, moving slowly toward a point … Continued
I Know Hephaestus, It’s Tough Loving Love ||| Boston Review
No one could tell us how we ended up here. The definition of glass is obvious. It’s glass. And we were‚ like‚ right inside it. A glass arm that had our arms inside. A glass hip. Glass pupils to keep … Continued
My Memories of 2016 As Scathing Reviews of Batman vs Superman ||| BOAAT
Look, up in the sky! Look what the culture is thinking of itself! Two orphans are up against it, ladies and gentlemen. And aren’t we all orphans in some way? Aren’t we all adopted? The illegal alien falls to earth … Continued
Separate State ||| The Diagram
The family two docks down, their chatter straining over the talk radio blaring, in-laws, who never had kids, warning relative’s kids, “Too close, kids.” Me on my dock thinking No kids, so that’s the reason the kids are too close, but no breaks. The in-laws: “Stop it. Stop horsing around.” “Oh, go ahead, fall … Continued