Jianqing Zheng: Flamenco in Four Parts
Hands clapping, fingers snapping, heels clicking—the dancer in a red trumpet dress swirls in a flow of vitality, stomping the wooden floor to percuss the bargoers’ hearts.
Michael Simms: Three Young Poets Drinking All Night In the Cemetery of the Black Angel, Iowa City, 1977
as if we could carry away the urn
of grief long dead parents felt for their child
lost to diphtheria, typhus, pox or pure accident
Virginia Raguin: Why Michelangelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ endures
in 1536, Michelangelo was asked to create a painting for the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. For this 590 square feet, filled with 391 figures, he labored until 1541.
Chana Bloch: Beaux Arts
They knew something about pleasure, too,
those painters—how well they understood
it may be compounded
of the simplest elements, the merest trace
of water or light.
Video: The God Man
‘The God Man’ is an animated film of an interview with Jonah Weisman, the man who discovered the entity “The God Man” drifting through space.
Michelle Bitting: Drive
I do love driving Mama in it
now along the coast highway, cranking the windows, folding the top down so the stiff fishy
breeze stings our noses and make our curls fly off the backs of our necks.
Video: Inside, The Valley Sings
Trapped in the never-ending horror of solitary confinement, three prisoners in the United States seek comfort and escape in the boundless landscapes of their own imaginations.
Jordan Smith: Tattoo
The tattoo place was in the strip mall
Between the pizza shop and the liquor store,
Where all during Covid he bought
His tequila because the owner played
Old blues on the stereo and kept his distance
Alexis Rhone Fancher: The Girl in the Photo
She’s been damaged. Life’s out of control; there are no good options. The girl in the photo wants to let go, to quit this life and choose another…
Cynthia Atkins: When Harry Met Sally
A light quaked on earth, because when the waitress
gasped and blushed, we gasped and blushed,
sitting in the plush dark aisles to our interiors.
Video: Maneuvers
“Maneuvers (Manöver)” is an experimental animation combining skiing with stop-motion animation.
Michael T. Young | The Secular Sublime: An Appreciation of Gerald Stern
Stern’s poems are deceptively simple. He writes in a language completely devoid of pretense and yet dignified with the elegance of profound meditation.
Barbara Crooker: Climbing the Eiffel Tower at Night
We climb into this ladder of light.
William Blake and Catherine Boucher: Four Images from The First Book of Urizen
The globe of life-blood trembled
Branching out into roots:
Fib’rous, writhing upon the winds:
Fibres of blood, milk and tears
