Salt Water
Randi Hoffman
Salt Water
Riding the waves with my father at the Jersey Shore, I feel seaweed wrapping around my legs and taste the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean. I am eight years old, and I love the ocean smell and the glaring hot ...
Let’s Get Rid of Nature
Deborah Pintonelli
Let’s Get Rid of Nature
(for Peter Christensen)
Nature, you’re just a bad mother.
Provoker of cycles of neverending
Thickening and thinning.
Emptying and refilling.
You’re just a sentimental journey you sentime...
Nightscape
Yuko Otomo
nightscape
(for Steve)
in the distant darkness
an ocean crashes
against itself
it is silent
you stand & look at waves
as if they were a fatal dream reality
pity, charity or love of any kind
do not weig...
First Ladies First
Bonny Finberg
First Ladies First
i
The gold on the lamp
is the gold on the chair
is the gold on her cheeks and slitted eyes.
Her skin, scrubbed to red,
the frost on her face matters,
fostered in dungeons,
by ogres and witches...
o shitty guitar
Thurston Moore
o shitty guitar
o shitty guitar
we walk down the bowery
down the street
flashing time
ginsberg orlovsky sitting stoops
holding hands (on the subway) how dare they
beautiful in the heat
daring daring young old me...
A Crushed Pepsi Can Floats Down
Bud Smith
A Crushed Pepsi Can Floats Down
your side of the world is flooded
mine is on fire
helicopters circle
dropping emptied juice boxes
candy bar wrappers
crusts from sub-par sandwiches
these days
even god has a day job
...
A Hundred Tongues
Mitch Corber
A Hundred Tongues
A hundred tongues lead me to steer
the impossible far-gone conclusions of a sleuth
chewing on a clue. In turning an inner ear
to the serious nature of plates,
I break one, to see what it’s made of....
Dorothy Parker Will Have Her Revenge on Manhattan
Joseph P. O'Brien
Dorothy Parker Will Have Her Revenge on Manhattan
Sipping gin & mercury at dawn's bloodthirsty
light, she hears the harlequins
throb inside their wombs,
and she whispers: "God have mercy."
Below the maddened crowd, ...
Poet in a Shade of Jade
Sheila Maldonado
Poet in a Shade of Jade
I am so jealous of how poor you are
of how you are poor
your particular stilo pobre
The way you put no cash and
no money together is uncanny
This aesthetic
lack of change combined
with l...
FREEDOM
Bob Holman
FREEDOM
Thanks to Darryl Alladice
FREEDOM to put lima beans and black-eyed peas together
FREEDOM to take off BB King's watch
FREEDOM to shout "Let's hit it" on every Other beat
FREEDOM to look at everybody whenever yo...
Praise Song for Today
Jose Padua
Praise Song for Today
I am writing in praise of sloth, in praise
of doing nothing and by nothing I don’t
mean watching television or sleeping,
I mean doing nothing: no moving about
the house with your arms hanging l...
Passion and Materialism
Jim Feast
Passion and Materialism
As I walk, pushing
through the flood of the crowd,
awash under the breakneck
pull of the Flushing stores; the racial
mixture, muddy colored, vibrant, mulatto,
trying to remember her face ...
Dog Daze of Summer
Patricia Carragon
Dog Daze of Summer
These are the Dog Daze of Summer
it’s time to go to work!
Leave by half past eight
and the tin can snake is late again
doing its snail’s waltz on rails.
Play Solitaire in your head,
waste...
