Myrtle
William Considine
I want all the flowers
that thrive right away at the start of spring,
that stand alone in the cool noon and the long, chilly
shadows of dawn & dusk and through cold nights.
They take the first chance
opening of light ...
I WANT TO TELL YOU HOW IT WAS
Dorothy Friedman
because this is the only chance I'm going to get--
It was an ordinary day except no one had taken out the garbage.
It had been snowing since noon and there were piles of snow
on the front lawn and on t...
SATORI IN MANHATTAN
Joel Allegretti
———on the platform at the 175th Street subway station,
Washington Heights———I find myself thinking I’m
Vladimir in Calvin Klein black lambskin and Estragon
in Tommy Hilfiger dim-gray chinos———sitting...
FOR HERE THERE IS NO PLACE
Anton Yakovlev
You’ve figured out the colonization of Mars
and the need to live in caves for five hundred years.
You’ve predicted private nuclear weapons,
deciphered symbols of bigotry on some trump cards.
You’ve held cookout...
Episode 12 – Norman Douglas
Bernard Meisler
Norman Douglas in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Norman Douglas, Bernard Meisler and Tina Carstensen, relaxing in her Avenue D apartment, 1986
Norman Douglas is a writer (though he says he's not) and a poet (though...
HOW TO LIVE WITH YOURSELF
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
There are only two sins—banality and venality.
They are not like revenge, hot red pokers.
Jealousy, with its long snoot.
Sloth, killing me softly with its lips.
Vanity—dynamite in a vise.
Lust racing across the mud...
Strawberry
Suzi Kaplan Olmsted
Spring bursting in strawberry juice down my chin
While on the TV reality jail show a blond with a model’s bone structure
And over-plucked brows is released from men’s jail to the streets
Early dawn with no money and...
the dead wife
Carl Watson
The dirt floor had to be leveled
And all the stones raked out,
Carried out in buckets and piled
In the yard as ballast against
The bowed foundation of the south wall.
There were boulders and bluestone
Slabs, some big ...
NATURE
Bonny Finberg
We can rewrite the narrative.
Eve eats the apple and leaves the Garden
fortified by knowledge and multiplied by wisdom,
leaves the comfort of the first mirage,.
to find the greater world
where good and evil
make thin...
An End-of-the-World Cult of My Own
Jose Padua
One day I will have my own end-of-the-world cult.
We will believe that the end of the world
is coming tomorrow,
and that we had better be prepared.
If the end doesn’t come tomorrow,
we will admit our mistake, and post...
The End of the World
Patricia Carragon
In her dream,
her parents’ wedding photo
burned slowly.
Their ashen marriage
vaporized in life and death.
A grayish puddle formed a stain
on the chest of drawers.
She woke up
and went about her day,
listened to ...
Episode 11 – steve dalachinsky
Bernard Meisler
In conversation with steve dalachinsky.
steve dalachinsky is a downtown New York poet who's also very active in the jazz scene - he's worked with Matt Shipp, William Parker, and wrote one of his many books of poetry w...
God, Vodka, Suicide
Michael Lindgren
God hurt her in
a place that doesn’t show so
she drank until there was no more God
and they told her but you will die and
she sd of course
I will die. every body dies
and she didn’t believe it
until the sky cracke...
Survivors
Amy Barone
Cahows re-emerged on Bermuda’s Nonsuch Island
after a three-hundred-year absence. They thrive amid
native flora, wildlife, and limited access to man.
Tangier Island in the middle of Chesapeake Bay
supplies the world...
STEAMROLLED
Thaddeus Rutkowski
I come to where I usually take a detour—
a stretch where the pavement has been roughed up
in preparation for new pavement.
Now, I see machines laying new blacktop,
so I ride on the new surface.
The material is sticky,...
