Jose Padua: Silent Tongues in the House of the Rising Sun
what’s even more beautiful
is that tonight in my small sleepy town
I can look up to the sky and see
a deep blue silence surrounding
a half, nearly see-through moon
Daisy Fried: So Much Depends on WCW
William Carlos Williams was a furious poetic revolutionary — furiously working over a lifetime to reinvent American poetry, furious at poetry he considered backward, and at critics and editors who … Continue reading
Aidan Rooney: Tropical Evening (after Ida Faubert)
Come breathe with me the sidewalk scents and
exhale into the night my erratic soul.
Vincent Spina: Homage to the Fifties
crazy in love, continued like the flow
of a small and quiet river, hoping
one day to console a little white cloud
that cried at the end of another river
Emily De Ferrari: Sicilian Triptych
These honest waters, flow over the ancient debauchery of Baiae,
over the volatility of Marsili, bring to shore the bodies
but we do not see them.
Jose A. Alcantara: Divorce
He has flown headfirst against the glass
and now lies stunned on the stone patio,
nothing moving but his quick beating heart.
Molly Fisk: Phil, Who Loved the Giants
The bra I took off at 4:45 through the sleeve of my dress
and put down somewhere I find on my grandmother’s hutch
in the kitchen, incongruous, surrounded by jars of jam
Sydney Lea: Sunday Morning
…his left ring finger was hewn at the knuckle quite some years ago. If I think hard enough, I can remember when he was secretive about that injury. He kept the disfigured hand in his pocket or behind his back as much as he could.
Michael T. Young: Dutch Hex Signs
They spoke a language that smelled of horsehair
and tasted of apple butter and red beet eggs
Angele Ellis: from Four Way Books / Leonard, Torres, and Cohen
“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public.” –Allen Ginsberg
Arlene Weiner: After the Emergence of the Periodical Cicadas
bouquets of cicada brides whose courtship
made the sky sing so in May.
The wedding music stopped, these are left,
to be caught by maidens in seventeen years.
Nina Kossman: While you wait for the music
While you wait for the music to open like a flower,
it is waiting for you to open yourself
to the air from which it is made
Richard Levine: Disturbing the Peace
“Do you want to know what war is about?”
Jake asked the talkative one.
“Don’t say it, Jake,” I said.
