Poetry

TAPESTRYBy Natasha Zarine IncarnaratedClutching the rolls of youDrip latent constellationsEnchained by taboo.But when I howl of pleasureI never think of you. Raping myself, I caressEvery tingling motionFeeling what will not exist.Like a harp, I pluckMyself to...

MY FATHER’S DOG TAGSBy Billy Malanga My Father’s Dog Tags The name on my father’s brass dog tagsdoesn’t match his driver’s license.The gunfire caves filled with burning fleshand bloodshot south Pacific surfhad taken its toll. He...

WHAT WAS THAT CITYBy Mary Crow       WHAT WAS THAT CITY―after Cavafy What city tangled me in its sandy roots,led me into desert, where I gasped at vastness and vacancy, pyramids fringingmiles of nothing growing, a void I vanished...

The Runner On feet of dreams the runner’s headed to land’s end.She knows the horizon keeps receding while she’s running,but she runs as though it didn’t.A finish line is not her aim.Along the pathway time’s...

DOWNPOURBy Bruce McRae Downpour A heavy rain falling over Lithium Island,the roads flooded with tears of the disenfranchised,the quarry a lake of grief and woes,the tavern’s cellar under thirteen inchesof something that once resembled water. All of...

MOREBy Christopher Fields      More                                                                                                             Why seek anything morethan a life that slips frictionlessly by?I want more.  I want a life that lashes;I want a life that grinds and scrapes,that prunes away weak piecesexposing lurid truths beneath.I...

AFTERWORD: OR, THE AMATEUR POETBy Michael T. Smith Afterword: Or, the Amateur Poet                 You thought you gripped the futureWhen you only brushed the dust from your handsand pinched earth's prurient cheekLike that of a chubby,...

MIRRORBy Paul Bamberger THE KISS five decades she waitsthe stirring of a small legend   a scream the length of a lifegone unheard   but with his death near    for fear of having never beenlove returns   she bends to kiss himone last...

kaleidoscoping a sun-dressed mare Lest my heart becomes a seagull, soars away—the world is a cold country—lest my heart effervesces in pyrogenic fever, leaving my body unlike a lamb, but a naïve bull running from...

Half of New Territory The rain’s let upas the last few drops of milk and tears snake downthe cereal bowl, on the breakfast table,covered in silence and soaked in honey-we go about deaf and blind,...