I’ve Got My Shiny Kitten
Sharon Mesmer
— for Yun Peng
Hell yeah I’m skinny.
My body is COVERED in skin!
But I’ve got my shiny kitten
and I am not the same person I used to be.
Shopping naked with my shiny kitten
is like finding out that Beyonc...
off on grand boulevard
Norman Douglas
1.
fuck you fuck you fuck
you scribbled the self-
proclaimed, officially
acclaimed, pharmaceutically
addle-brained bourgeois
poet in morning electric’s light.
okay, i added the burgher bit
because i’m talking cit...
The Viewing
David Rattray
The wife spoke to me
by name:
“Thanks so much for coming,
David.” Some didn’t
want to see him. One
wouldn’t even go in. I did.
I touched his hand.
It was as if he were only
sleeping, soft and warm.
I never ...
Call Up
John Farris
Today the world is wet & white: everybody tries
to throw the snow back (a girl, determined, handles a shovel
gingerly, sends a pile of it scattering; it flies
to the court below, exposing a red-stained Kreolite
stair, ...
Kiss of Kind
Carl Watson
Virtue and Fear
Stare at each other in the mirror,
They feed upon & tease each other
Until neither one remembers what it used to be.
That mirror’s name is Vanity,
It can make a body live in harmony ...
Last Supper in an Airport
Ronald B. Richardson
Dawdle. Doodle. What to do?
Spill an alphabet, spill a stew.
Fire the cauldron, eat the bread,
soon those waiting will be dead.
Down the supper, drink the curse;
no matter how dull, death is worse.
--Ron Richar...
Landscape with a Bear in It Somewhere
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
The limber late light
travels across the ridge
where the bear climbed.
Even with my head thrown back
I still can’t take in the tops
of the tall pointed trees
up there. A friend’s death
is flickering in and out
of...
For an Infant in the Throes of a Fatal Condition
Robert C. Hardin
Cirrhosis isn’t half as bad
As maladies you might have had.
A failing liver strains the muscles
But liberates the red corpuscles.
When voided kidneys soak one’s dollies,
Relief, like spasms, comes in volleys.
Rope-...
Erasure, The Lotus Eaters, Ulysses*
Larissa Shmailo
BY LORRIES ALONG SIR JOHN ROGERSON’S QUAY
past Nichols’ the undertaker’s. Eleven, daresay.
Sent his right hand with slow grace over his hair:
Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere?
Ah, in the dead s...
Some of My Friends
Max Blagg
“Some of my friends don’t know who they belong to.”
Dipsomanic daytrippers kicking it
in small motels on desert mornings
dancing a june bug sonata
percussive staccato legato
flowing smooth and certain as a rive...
Linda
Eddie Woods
LINDA
“songs like a practiced whore
who turns away from no one
but the one who loves her.”
--Djuna Barnes
How deathly strange it all seems—
especially here on the thin edge of passion,
...
Swallow the Evidence
Wanda Phipps
Inspired by The Limits of Control, a film by Jim Jarmusch
my mind hops back
to the century trees
of Cabo de Gata
a woman in platinum wig
white cowboy hat
white trench coat
and cowboy boots
covered in leopard’s ...
the perfect child
steve dalachinsky
i am a descendant of those that have survived for centuries
& my mother wanted me to be the perfect child
i am still amazed that people know how to make doors
their ingenuity baffles me
way beyond that of a beaver & its...
Other Body Parts Are Worthy of Attention
Hal Sirowitz
“My problem is I’m both attracted and repelled by the male organ.”
—Diane Keaton, Manhattan
I hope you don’t quote me
as saying I like your sexual organ,
she said. There are better things
I...
Poetry Toys
Sparrow
Yes,
there
are
bobble-
head
dolls
of
Poe,
but
where
are the
action
figures
of
Auden?
Bob Ross, oil on canvas, 24" x 30", 2014 by Samoa Moriki
--Sparrow
Sensitive Skin 12 av...
