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Of a Cold Country

June 26, 2022

Across the room you stand in torchfire, early king of cold country. You drink wine. Your smile is a thin refusal. I made you out of lies and colors. I learned your face before then formed it. I … Continued

The Body of Coney Island

June 24, 2022

Mark McCloskey

This place is almost larger suddenly than I can get to. My senses fuse, clearing Coney Island piece by piece like a sharp stick this noontide. … Continued

The Rapture: A Sermon

June 22, 2022

Wayne Miller

We, the elect, will be lifted into the purity of our politics, lifted like smoke into the upside-down buckets of bells. We’ll ring against each other and that will become the noise of the nation hanging over the … Continued

The Creation

June 20, 2022

Dolores Stewart

It was a dream of bodies It was a dream of your body unlocking itself from newly risen fields It was a dream of you materializing from the brown limbs of … Continued

Colombia

June 18, 2022

Tomaz Salamun

Translated from Slovenian by Phillis Levin and Tomaž Šalamun Cats have set themselves on wings. Buttons have buttercups. Hares are soft flesh, hares are soft flesh, they shudder and hustle. They rise the sun, actually they hold it … Continued

New Year’s Eve Dress

June 17, 2022

Lauren Hilger

There is no satrap with a decree that says nudity is preferred. There is a river that dictates this to me. Strapless, thin, short, implying bodies for warmth, a fireplace, luxury of heat. I have worn rhinestones. I … Continued

Good for You

June 12, 2022

Kelsi Vanada

this harvest moon’s a swollen pinguecula yellow-orange bulbous and tucked tight against its shadow side like mine’s tucked against my iris. the doctor says UV light or dust and common in farmers or simply susceptible people like me. … Continued

América’s Sun

June 7, 2022

Alfonsina Storni

Translated from Spanish by Orlando Ricardo Menes My bedroom shut, and I traveling in dreamful beaches where I fish for ancient myths, and a coral reef raises its future soul that will write books. (The man, his head … Continued

I Am…

June 5, 2022

Alejandra Pizarnik

Translated from Spanish by Yvette Siegert my wings? two rotting petals my reason? shots of briny wine my life? a well-conceived void my body? a fissure in the chair my moods? a child’s gong my face? a … Continued

The Lapidary Crystal

May 29, 2022

Geoffrey Nutter

All around the city, people are staying up late, burning the midnight oil, losing sleep, trying to get things done, to find answers, acquire knowledge about subjects unknown to you and me; in the stone and glass pavilion … Continued

Horse Girl Fever

May 21, 2022

Kevin Maloney

Poor Horse Girl. She was cross-eyed and flunking the fourth grade because she couldn’t stop drawing horses, big beautiful stallions that galloped across her math homework and into her English compositions. Her feet pointed out like a penguin … Continued

Birth Stone

May 8, 2022

Lorna Goodison

The older women wise and tell Anna first time baby mother, “hold a stone upon your head and follow a straight line go home.” For like how Anna was working in the field, grassweeder, right up till … Continued

The Cataracts of my Grandmother

May 7, 2022

Norma Farber

Somewhere beyond this kitchen and her old eyes there lies, I think there lies a country blindly hinted of. with wise all-seeing hands she grasps the damp, the give of dough; the dint of knife that flays the noodles fine; … Continued

A Mother

May 6, 2022

Necati Cumali

Translated from Turkish by Nermin Menemencioğlu The woman must have been out washing A bundle on her arm, her rough hands chapped with soda Like all Jewish women of her age She wore a faded black velvet coat … Continued

Bodacious

May 5, 2022

Vida Cross

FOR ARCHIBALD J. MOTLEY’S BROWN GIRL She’d walk up and take the sandwich from your hand to feed her kids She’d wear red ’round her rear on Sunday to Sunday service Her lips were painted red Her nails … Continued

Failed Essay on Shapes

May 4, 2022

Elisa Gonzalez

Mother tells Girl, who chews the word like bubble gum. Or, newly toothed, Girl really chews an elephant’s helping of gum. More interested in blowing a bubble than in the names of what she can … Continued

Forgot About His Mother

May 3, 2022

Anna Swir

Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk She was dying in the basement, on sacks of coal, crying for water, crying for her son, no one was there. The son forgot about his mother, the son was cleaning … Continued

Do Boys Turn into Butterflies

May 2, 2022

Olivia McCannon

You’ll always be a thing of sun-dazzle and sweetness soft as fingertips, suckling nectar and tuned to bliss— No butterfly will be gale-torn, wasp-stabbed, clawed or pinned—not while I inhale your hair, listening What do … Continued

The Drawer Marked Meats

May 1, 2022

Lisa Allen Ortiz

A bedtime story about Bluebeard all the wives on meat hooks then wake up and the house is dark. Fear is a gift from mother— the way she grabbed our collar bones, said: get inside. We had the … Continued

Up the Mountain

April 29, 2022

Ye Lijun

translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain Rustling in the grass. A little squirrel hauls a large fluffy tail among twigs and branches an instantaneous flash. Empty mountain. Birds singing. Flapping feathers so minute, yet ubiquitous . . . … Continued

In the Yard I Lie on my Back and Dream of Turtles

April 29, 2022

Keetje Kuipers

Or would if I were asleep, and not awake while this child runs circles around my star pinned to the ground. She brings me the yellowest leaf, the thinnest stick, each perfectly round pebble she finds hidden in … Continued

Preservation

April 15, 2022

Christian Anton Gerard

Christian Anton Gerard’s tongue is a wetland. When he moves his lips: Palm Warblers. Thousands. His is a Venus flytrap trapping itself. It is what it is. It’s because of the girl from Memphis. Earlier he considered watching … Continued

Ache

March 15, 2022

Gretchen Marquette

what if I began with the duck’s egg its glossy carmine yolk bleeding on the lake’s new summer path its blue-green shell turned inside out if I say the wind was frightening, that in the early part of … Continued

The Vermin and the Stars

March 11, 2022

D. Foy

Fog moon, mud moon, moons of flowers and heat— this is the friction of space on space, the endless exchange of things through which swarm the insects of confusion, as in a changer’s dream, her ear a sleeping … Continued

Bedroom Life with Ceramic Frog

March 4, 2022

Joshua Diamond

Different from other of my lives but not so different because you are a part of it and them and these and this. We sleep because we love to dream and I talk in my sleep, say I … Continued

Sparrow’s Song

February 25, 2022

Regan Good

Shall I be of the Sparrow or of the Blood Eagle? The curve of a rose’s thorn mimics these lungs drawn through to make two bright red wings for a small child, a hopping hellion, hung high … Continued

Still Life with Insufficient iCloud Storage

June 7, 2021

Julia Guez

And here we are— sewing secrets we have wanted in some form to keep, sewing … Continued

Turning Points and Revolution

June 7, 2021

Minna Zallman Proctor

This is a revolutionary moment in that everything is changing. But it’s not a revolution, because most of the forces we’re all reacting to (pandemic, injustice, a massive failure to find common moral ground) are not forces put into … Continued

On the Occasion of Our Tenth Anniversary

June 6, 2021

Julia Guez

Sea-green eyes, skin the color of dust, I come from a long line of fire signs. We seed the open field … Continued

Policarpa

June 5, 2021

María Ospina

Translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary Not being devoured is the most perfect of feelings. Not being devoured is the secret goal of an entire life. —Clarice Lispector, “The Smallest Woman in the World” (tr. Katrina Dodson) She scratches … Continued

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