We love the pace that Patricia Miranda builds in “A Sunday Afternoon”—she packs the single stanza with delicate humor and a theatrical rush. Too easily we see the speaker as ourselves, clumsily reversing through a day of mishandled opportunity and…
With subtle luxury of sound, Emily Strauss writes of the desert, the West. Couplets hide the harmony crafted line by line until that final hard rhyme, shining like a jewel. Strauss understates her language as “dry and austere,” “barren”—but the…
Moira J. has written a visceral love poem with “THESE ARE THE WITNESS MARKS”—full of bodytalk and imagery that burrows under your skin, makes your back itch. Notice the goosebumps, the old salt, the zodiac mouth, but also the lover…
This long poem, by P.J. Williams, drives. A beautifully paced meditation on place and family and memory, filled with blues and grays and burnished dawns—”the road to old fort” invites the reader in on a trip enjoyably unexpected. With Williams’s permission,…
This long poem, by P.J. Williams, drives. A beautifully paced meditation on place and family and memory, filled with blues and grays and burnished dawns—”the road to old fort” invites the reader in on a trip enjoyably unexpected. With Williams’s permission,…
This long poem, by P.J. Williams, drives. A beautifully paced meditation on place and family and memory, filled with blues and grays and burnished dawns—”the road to old fort” invites the reader in on a trip enjoyably unexpected. With Williams’s permission,…
Beauty by ambush may best describe Cheryl Pearson’s “Flamingo”. The poem meditates on its namesake with wit and wisdom and a freshness of imagery that calls out for publication. The yolk and wine and flaming knots and throats—Pearson has managed…
Pulled from a longer manuscript to be published soon, these two poems from “Fear of Intimacy, Fear of Want” speak to the depths of that longer work. Beyond the fresh body imagery, these poems evoke place with precision and delicacy,…
Elegies, the poet Dan Bellm argues, are poetry’s first reason. We are proud to publish Chaun Ballard’s powerful “Unfinished Sonnet.” It does all the right things a sonnet should do. The poem packs the mouth with sounds, darkly enjoyed—it gives…
Immediately, Van Prooyen gets inside the reader’s mouth. From there, she works outward, shaking the limbs and the feet and the hands, convincing the reader’s body to get in the car and go along for the ride. What a ride…
