Poetry

POETRY By Ben­jamin Faro We, broth­ers, were but boom-swings born of unnamed storms—eighty-eight knot gales that tested Mother’s savvy. Born at the peak of twenty-nine ‑foot swells, we left her con­cussed and rud­der­less, unsteer­ing in our unsaid sud­den­ness, pum­meled by the fetch and wind shear. Shaken by…

POETRY By Ben­jamin Faro On a finger of con­ti­nent between golden, earth ‑laden waters, where sunset is brighter even than L.A. and the Huang Hue never stops arriv­ing, I turn west to reject the mouth as a place of expul­sion. Why is it called a river mouth if a mouth…

POETRY By Sarah Dick­en­son Snyder Post­marked in Santa Fe: the sky is elec­tric blue with quiet  clouds banked against the endless moun­tains.   From the West Coast: an ocean is an ocean,  water swelling forever.   Maybe she travels for a new lan­guage. She knows how to pro­nounce the past…

POETRY By Terence Degnan dear Palin­drome, fuck// dear Parkinson’s,// Dianne is in the hos­pi­tal again// we are sitting on her dog, Sam// before she was taken away she walked over and gifted me one of those grip­pers my old man used to keep on his…

POETRY By Charles Byrne even pre-prepan­dem­ic, we were bubbled: Netflix- & Amazon sealed: pix­e­lat­ed min­is­cule-screen freeze-frames: air encir­cled in  plastic air bubbles with a tiny black box at the bottom: dis­crete  behav­ior­ist levers to parcel out the dopamine drip: our secure  little bubbles: gossip is…

POETRY By Kellam Ayres He sits shotgun in the car he’d sold to Maris for a dollar while she drives him to the hos­pi­tal. It’s spring­time. He holds a dish­tow­el dark with blood between his hands. Watch­ing a pair of car­di­nals, he’d shat­tered a coffee mug on the…

POETRY By Luke Johnson and Megan Mer­chant For I,   I thought of you and bullets and the husk of ruin we are feeding our chil­dren, saying swallow, it will make you strong, in the end, but I know. When I sat the other day with…

POETRY By Neil Flatman  Late sun longing through the knuck­les of the black­thorns by the pond; a lan­guorous spark. The copper heads of ferns bow down with what remain­ing dignity they hold. Autumn’s flown; longer days dis­solved fast as a winter breath. Surely that’s the memory,…

POETRY By Gary English Juarez tethers me like a balero with a bridge instead of string. I tread Stanton’s crammed path over the near-water­­less Rio Grande. I could have walked its dehy­drat­ed bed. Tanned leather’s weath­ered smell infuses the mercado’s air. Piñatas, penuche. Day of the Dead disguises,…

POETRY By Moham­mad Razai Ren­dezvous (I) Last night in my dream you smiled in a way that meant more than friend­ship, so I am check­ing if that’s what you mean. We fre­quent that lamp-lit cobbled street, slalom­ing in some misty labyrinth so hazy I’m waiting for…