Five Poems

Brenda Miller

Stake

as in burned at
for heresy or misunderstanding—

martyrdom or taken
in error, mistaken ...

“Marking Time” and Other Poems

Karen Klein

Words for wanting
contain ‘L’:
lonely
garrulous
old ...

History Of My Heart: Opening and Closing Passages

Robert Pinsky

One Christmastime Fats Waller in a fur coat
Rolled beaming from a taxicab with two pretty girls
Each at an arm as he led them in a thick downy snowfall ...

Excerpts from “Alva and the Beast”

L.S. McKee

These poems are excerpted from a series in progress currently titled “Alva and the Beast.” This project, through its central character Alva, explores tropes of passion, longing, loss, and mortality through the lens of nature and technology—and how these two…

“What Hurts” and Other Poems

Sara Pirkle Hughes

Maybe what hurts should always hurt.
The throbbing thumb, the achy joint,
The tender foot in thorn-filled dirt.
Maybe forgetting is not the …

Three Poems from We Play a Game

Duy Doan

Rat-tat-tat We heard Changes three times on the radio. First on the way to Salem. Again on the way to the grocery store on the way back from Salem. And then again on the way to pick up Becky and…

Select Poems from The Amoeba Game

Tara Skurtu

I stood at the stove holding a wooden spoon in my right hand, listening to butter sputtering against the splattered circle of an egg. Perhaps ...

the shadow’s wink

Lea Orianne

i cuddle, gripping firm the pillow’s shrine
a taste of acrid absence. love, not there.
grasping still to treasures, that were not mine
my widowed joy, now free of cherished care ...

Oxherding Pictures

Eunice Flanders

She, who is no longer living
Under her mother’s wing,
Who is flying in the wooded land,

Between tree limbs,
Through seasons warm, wet ...

4 Poems

Safia Elhillo

Ode to Swearing
back home this is the worst profanity
what men use when they need to curse . . .