Miriam Levine: Beauty Secrets of the Dead
Jen who never read anything
but bills and Sunday papers
comes back from the dead educated.
Meg Pokrass: Between Animals
I imagined climbing the Everest of his body, perching on the top of his belly like a sexy squid, dangling my breasts over the shelf of his face like fishing lines.
Doug Anderson: Writers Block
Fenster McGraw is crawling out the back window of his lover’s house and stumbling into the alley pulling up his pants, and is spotted by the ever vigilant widow Winnie Wildwood with her nineteenth century naval spyglass who’s had her suspicions about that Wilson woman anyhow
Video: Travelers in the Night
Working the lonely late shift, a gas station cashier shares a silly moment with a special kind of stranger.
Jose Padua: On the Loving Grace of Well-Oiled Machines
but maybe that’s how
patriarchy works,
so fast and efficient
when it comes to killing,
so in love with the magic
of finding beautiful new worlds
to destroy
Sydney Lea: To Sydney Lea, Whom I Found Online
You must get tired of requests from witless strange men to meet up.
James Wright: Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are burdened.
I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.
Theo Marzials’ ‘A Tragedy’: The Worst Poem Ever Published
Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop.
Flop, plop.
Jason Baldinger: Employee of the Month
What a beautiful dream after thirteen straight days of work!
Employee of the Month!
Efficient, clear headed task manager!
This is how it feels to be brilliant!
This is how it feels to be perfect!
John Lawson: O King
The president recently promoted himself as “like the King of Israel… the second coming of God.” Poet John Lawson gives the president his due.
Video: The greatest glue commercial ever made
This classic 1992 television ad for Talens Rubber Cement swept the Cannes International Advertising Film Festival, winning its Grand Prix award.
Megan Volpert: The Sophomores
Sophomore is fangirling out. He loves these boys in their three piece suits…
Naomi Shihab Nye: To Netanyahu
My Palestinian father named his donkey after you…
Now I think he insulted the donkey.
Christine Skarbek: Oh, Poland!
My buddy Yolanta invited me over to Park Café to listen to this wizard on the piano, a 17-yr old skinny fellow. I cannot tell you how thin this character was or, for that matter, how long and tapered his fingers and what a master he was at the ivories.
