Fault in Light
until I leaned toward you the way one listens to static, only then did you allow my name— it rises, carrying what will make sense after the sound has passed, rising into the weather of years, everywhere, without direction. you scatter into borrowed faces, repeated hands, among…
Fault Line
There is a seam running through us— no bridge survives it. In daylight we keep drifting, moored at the edge they name forgiveness. I misplace you inside your own shadow. That becomes my thinnest shelter— they insist: a coastline, strewn with wreckage. They say it as if I had once been…
A Place in Hell
Take my place in HELL for I am forever YOURS Spring is a blue place where your shoes quiet down. I take myself down to Springville and want to sing on The Ship. Miles ahead of me stands a blue rhumba where I am taught meaning. I lament my old Moondog on Saturday night in garage.…
Paris is old
I peer into my eyes in paris and there moondog greets me and tells me he loves paris and that charlie parker loves paris —and paris will grow old with me, but I don't wanna grow old with french folk who speak in abstracted riddles knowing nothing about the burden of my consciousness…
A&B&C
Outside, Mother is nursing her succulents again. The Florida sky swallows itself and spats out fish-spine clouds until there is no phlegm left in its lungs. I almost ask Mother why the sky is sick, how many fish it must have stolen to be throwing up so much extra. I trace 妈 against Mother's…
Call the Clean Up Crew
Because all the vultures feasted on the carcass of his dead cat, run over by a red Tesla mid-afternoon, we called them Chinese. Because the cat never cared for anyone but him, no one bothered to pick up its long, matted fur and pearlescent bones, scattered across the street…
Sun-Dim
Blue-banked in brown the storm wall clasps its mighty hands against the futility of slender palms. It's not hurricane season, but even Boca Raton has winter and it's ugly. Taylor Hagood lives in south Florida and is the author of the recently published chapbook Lepidoctora, and poems and…
Spraying Copper on Grape Leaves
No way I can make sense of the crazy green conglomerate of leaves and vines, a dissertation on sway and flutter straining to swell the fruit and pump life forward through tendrils curling into summer. In the cold I prune as best I can, filled with guilt despite all…
bellflowers…
bellflowers losing their grip morning dew Gareth Nurden hails from Newport, Wales, and has had several hundred pieces of haiku, senryu and haiga published in nineteen countries worldwide over recent years such as Wales, England, Russia, USA, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and more.
Ladder
You live up north, where the trees speak Latin and one lonely car sweeps the streets all night long. While you sleep, I come to steal air for 20 cents a pump. Of poems, you prefer ones that say less, strangled by metaphor. Nothing but a name that bears prodigies and criminals by the dozen.…
SINK
what settles at the bottom of the ocean displaces the sand around it: that is us – is it not? moving in and out ourselves making space for new bodies for new presence. Casey Grace Lai is a young writer based in Boston, but has also had the privilege of calling Singapore, Hong Kong and the…
As Simple as a Season
What was ice at the base of the fence post is now humble vetch flitting it purple in the draft, white membrane chilling the field is now a blur of sunflowers growing wildly with just sky as limitation; wouldn't it be perfect in just a season if we could peel back old skin (as…
Two to Four Weeks Left
I plan on living forever, she'd said in the beginning. Forever took her eleven years of cancer stage four, convincing us all each year. Now, I have days, hours in the deep recliner, circled by a visiting daughter and three grandaughters; at her feet, the goldendoodle she…
That Ache Near Your Heart, She Said
could be the tight wrap of a bud, waiting for first permission of warmth. It could be the shrouded lens from the lighthouse, forgotten, on the far shores of longing. Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including most recently The Presence…
oranges taste better in jeju
you live in the sky. dirt tethers your body to the fields, to the off-kilter porch, to me—but your eyes are tilted onto trains and oil-coated mechanisms instead of damp earth and sticky oranges. i stare at your back, thinking that it could be enough. naive; you are…
The Ghosts of Benjamin
The sky did not fall; it dissolved. It began as a bruise on the horizon, a deep, concussive purple that suggested the air itself was holding its breath. Then came Benjamin. He did not arrive with the frantic energy of a summer gale, but with the slow, rhythmic finality of a…
Kudzu
Jilted, I planted it like a curse, waited until he was gone, scattered the seeds wide enough to test its patience, how it waits for nothing. Small, I knew they would become. The vines learned his house, his heart. Those doors and windows vanished into green. We could not escape. Some growth…
Bicycle Memory
We lie belly to belly, memory slipping between ribs, thought made heat and grief and nothing held except the hum of cunning and the echo of use worn smooth by yesterday’s yesterday. Too little now that was too much. My sister said love is like a bicycle ride. I understand it,…
Roads Home
The paths we take to come home again are longer than those same roads are away. They arc, electricity lighting the sullen midnight dark, stretching out in the dim spaces between stars. Maybe tires move faster, you say, when they're taking us away. When they aren't weighed down with our…
Thirty-One
Before you the world ended, stretched on tables of tears – like every other single woman I knew at thirty – that confused everyone who didn't know and scared my mother. Made her worry that I might be suicidal, might give myself over to fear that I wasn't actually living after thirty…
Autopsy/Inventory
I splay my grandmother's organs on the dining table and inventory what nobody wants; the table itself antiquated, scratched notes to a forgotten doll, fills the space of her liver. Her stomach pops under pressure of a knife, canned peas and apologies; a metal sheath beneath her…
Bomb of Choice
evacuation is paywalled // animals run towards the light but away from the heat // they can't tell the difference // did you see? a man patted out a burning bunny with his bare hands // it lived thank God // humanity, revived // drive your Tesla down your home street in ashes // we…
We Were Girls Together
(after Toni Morrison) I'll never know what it's like to be a man to look at the world and know it's mine, but I think I will pity him anyway. He will only ever see the woman. I will always see the girl. Because women recognize women who were girls together, blunt bangs and…
First Date
The wine stains my bones and drips polished taffy, the payment of a child taking and holding. You've been in the bathroom a long time. Shakes swallow my little freak hands. I pay for both meals and leave before you come back. There's a candy mint on the plate made of my ring finger and…
Your Statutory Rights Are Not Affected
For this poem to operate properly it requires a moment of meaningful silence at its centre. A moment of meaningful silence is not included with this poem. To begin experiencing your poem to the full please insert your moment of silence: [ h e r e ] I am sorry…
Endless Game
As the boy plays tennis on his own through the terrible nights, through the hideous days, people wonder, how does he live under spotlights and sun, smeared across cement like paint? Kids stare behind the eyes of their glowing cigarettes; lonely women take snaps on telephoto lenses;…
Simplicity
For Roy M. Lyon—whereabouts unknown—he loved his students so deeply, we all became his forever-writers You said you didn't write poetry and certainly wouldn't waste time reading it. Liar. I found my poem in the pocket of your coat. I found where you'd copied it and left it on your desk.…
Everything Dead was Once Alive
The tin soldiers tightened their tin boots, filled their tin rifles with tin bullets, summoned their tin courage. The fields were soon covered in tin blood. The survivors marched home leaving a trail of footprints shivering beneath a yellow sky. The wrinkled caravan…
Not So Unlikely
The mailman and firewoman toasted their love with flutes of Champagne, shed the scars of past romances like a snake molts skin. She called his mouth "glory." He called her mouth "rosebud." They left each other troths written on rice paper. She left his in his coffee cup. He left…
I Looked at the World and Declared it Incomprehensible
I forget when I first realized that people are windows, look into them, look through them, temporary, self-indulgent clouds of sadness, oceans of the past. But I wanted to be more, wanted to build a better me. I had the dentist pull my teeth…
