Old Times There
“He’s dreaming, and // I see his dream.” In Shane McCrae‘s new verse drama, Jim Limber looks down on Jefferson Davis from heaven–and Davis grasps at him from hell.
Muscularity and Eros: On Syntax
“Possibly the most disturbing thing about prosody–but about syntax especially, because it involves choice–is its utter fidelity to our innermost–truer?–selves. We sing–and we are betrayed.”Carl Phillips maps the work of syntax through examples from Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Tommy Pico, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Sharon Olds, Ed Skoog, Linda Gregg, and francine j. harris.
Exit Music (For My Sweetheart The Cheater)
“I elbow crawled / through car bombs and bar brawls just to find you. I’m not your limp // Virginia dick…. I’m the woman / swathed in bloodshot, rising up from unclean seas.” A new poem of fierce vengeance and striking vulnerability from Brandi Nicole Martin.
Two Responses to Donald Trump
In “My Greco-Russian Investigation, Reginald Gibbons adapts Pindar’s Third Pythian Ode to hold Donald Trump up to history. And with “The Goddess,” Kathleen Ossip moves from Dante’s Paradiso through her own apotheosis as Mommybody, traveling across the U.S. in search of a sustainable vision of the future.
Persephone, Engaged
“as they shake / the field around them / withers.” With sharp wit and and in terrible detail, Maya Phillips retells the young goddess’ forced descent into a world where “she’d sooner be kin / of fire. // And so she’ll let herself burn / to steal herself back.”
Marnay. May 2017
“One of my friends died yesterday, back home. / My newest grandchild will be born next week. // Three Junes ago, the roses were first blooming. / This May, the roses are nearly ending. // But I woke up with the words in my head / seventy years of beauty.” Shifting between poetry and prose, Ann Fisher Wirth sifts a life among others far from home, in a small town in France.
from OBIT
“The visits lessened and lessened. They were pursuing their own deaths.” Victoria Chang‘s obituaries spiral out from the death of her mother into a series of wide-ranging, imaginative, and heart-breaking meditations.
from The Riddle of Longing
Read excerpts from Faisal Mohyuddin’s new chapbook, as well as an introduction by Dilruba Ahmed.
Neighborn
“it occupies me,” writes Christina Davis in a brittle and bold new poem of a self among selves, “this errand out of narrowness.” “such as I was / I was eligible.”
from Little Climates
Read excerpts from L.A. Johnson’s new chapbook, as well as an introduction by Tyler Mills.
Two Poems
“Who begs for school, in such a / yellow voice? // A mother determined / to set her children free.” Two new poems from Mahtem Shiferraw take on colors, exclusion, and words.
from Henry Kissinger, Mon Amour
Read excerpts from Conor Bracken’s new chapbook, as well as an introduction by Nick Lantz.
txt me im board
“you can see the need / to monitor words not meant / for me He wants to talk / to ones who are bored / And me I am not bored I am / flying” A turbulent cross-country flight–along with 30 minutes of free internet–turns into a capacious and kind new poem from Tanya Olson.
from Shadow-feast
“You were right. I couldn’t climb / the stairs. Breath was all I wore / and what bolted my body together, / poor meat, was a small will—smaller than me.” Exquisite new poems of dying and grief from Joan Houlihan.
Two Poems
“What are you going to do?” asks Camille Guthrie, wandering the history of art. “You hold her tremulous hand and wipe her brow / Stay up reading to her when she can’t sleep for the pain / To ease her tempestuous heart.”