Poetry
New Poetry by Marty Krasney: “Where We Are Now”
New poem by Marty Krasney: “Where We Are Now”
New Poetry by Linnea George: “Course Correction”
New poem by Linnea George: “Course Correction”
So Say We All and Wrath-Bearing Tree Collaborate!
In collaboration with So Say We All‘s Veterans Writing Division, founder Justin Hudnall and The Wrath-Bearing Tree‘s Andria Williams had the privilege of serving 21 veterans, active-duty servicemembers, and veteran family members over 2023 by providing four masterclasses followed by an intensive creative writing workshop. We would like to thank our masterclass teachers, Abby Murray, […]
New Poetry by Ben White: “Cleaning the M60 – 39 Years and January 26, 1984”
New Poetry by Ben White: “Cleaning the M60 – 39 Years and January 26, 1984”
New Poetry by Damian White: “Alabaster Clouds”
New Poetry by Damian White: “Alabaster Clouds”
New Poetry by Luis-Lopez Maldonado: “Virus Como Chocolate” and “Pancho Villa, Cesar Chavez y Luis Lopez Madonado”
New poetry by Luis-Lopez Maldonado: “Virus Como Chocolate” and “Pancho Villa, Cesar Chavez y Luis Lopez-Maldonado”
New Poetry by Sofiia Tiapkina: “To Forget or Not Maybe,” “Grasping the Sky,” and “Airless Embrace”
to forget or not maybe to forget or not maybe to fight for memory or not i’m here i’m she lying on my back underneath me blue cherries of bruises ten backs all pierced by bullets all riddled no one seems to cry here this defenseless death is unshared with any and all i […]
New Poetry by Steve Gerson: “Our Prayers”
Our Prayers where are the shields/we need/to stop the blastof bullets Glockand AKassaults?that overwhelm the bluein our veins?that enter our brains ourschools the bodiesof children with unicornbackpacks?that enterour workplaces inundatedwith anger our streetswith late-night drivebys?church service blood spatteredbibles shreddedcommandments tornas if by raptor teethmuzzle spit?while senators sayour prayers are with you?
New Poetry by Jennifer Smith: “So This is My Career?”
New Poem by Jennifer Smith: “So This is My Career”
New Poetry by Jim Kraus: “Amphibious”
AMPHIBIOUS In Hokusai’s “Kanagawa Wave,” the boatmen look like a school of masquerading fish about to disappear into the vast trough between waves, the scene a masque for the knowing seascape. Underwater, Ahab, pinned to the great white creature, like a wave that has disappeared into silence. In memory’s slow dancing, flesh now […]
New Poetry by Todd Heldt: “This Is A Drill, This Is Only A Drill” and “Suffer The Children”
ACTION IS PRETTY / image by Amalie Flynn This is a drill. This is only a drill. They voted to abolish history. There had been no commercials. We didn’t know which wrong to fear most, and nobody got the joke. When the polls ran out of ballots, somebody hurled a beer bottle through a church’s […]
New Poetry by Justice Castañeda: “There Will Be No Irish Pennants”
There Will Be No Irish Pennants “Discipline organizes an analytical space.” [1] Field Day & Inspection. Windows shut blinds open half-mast. Sinks will be bleached, faucets are to be pointed outward, and aligned. The toilet paper roll will be full. The shower handle will be left facing directly down towards the shower floor. Waste basket will be empty, cleaned […]
New Poetry by Carol Everett Adams: “Rabbit Trails”
RABBIT TRAILS in the Texas dust. We’re flat in the dirt so we can poke around down there with a long stick, while above us bullets fly and children hold up their honor roll certificate shields. You say blankets are the answer, and backpacks and better officers and armed teachers and doors that […]
New Poetry by Corbett Buchly: “Messages from Below”
messages from below the radio signals emanated from the depths commuters puzzled over the whistles and squawks that cut through their favorite programs cryptologists went to work but the waves soon turned to beams tunnels of coded energy aimed not at humans but at a point somewhere near Wolf 359 first assumed to […]
New Poetry by Jehanne Dubrow: “Poem for the Reader Who Said My Poems Were Sentimental and Should Engage in a More Complex Moral Reckoning with U.S. Military Actions”; “Epic War Poem”; “Tyrian Purple,” and “Some Final Notes On Odysseus”
When the goddess cries out,
her voice is a mountain against
the fighting. But the old soldier
keeps running—war like weather
in his ears, a summer storm,
in his pulse the tossing waves.
New Poem by Sandra Newton: “Naught”
NAUGHT There is naught to be done for it: We are over As the ocean is over its attraction And is now crawling Back from the shore, Having fucked it thoroughly. We are done Like steak on a grill, Sizzling and aromatic, Waiting to be devoured. We are finished As a wood floor sanded to […]
New Poetry by Sharon Kennedy-Nolle: “Soundings”
SOUNDINGS Things, your black b-ball shoes, loose-laced, open-tongued, curse one corner; your books, benched, titles turned down; your trophy array, glitterings speechify —steering far from the sirenic roar of your closed room— The tulips drip, yellows slackening, some randomly red-lined with a quirky genetic scrawl, into a drinking glass you left … Listen, all […]
New Poetry by Lisa Stice: “Our Folklore”
Our Folklore Long ago, you were molten rock, and I— well, I spoke the language of bears. But now that I have been out of the forest for so long, all the words and grammar escape me, and I often find myself lost. And you— well, you are often mistaken for a statue in this […]
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Cactus Tuna”; “We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays”; and “Reverse Run”
New Poetry from DA Gray: “Cactus Tuna”; “We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays”; and “Reverse Run”
New Poetry from Tanya Tuzeo: “My Brother, the Marine;” “My Brother’s Shoebox;” and “My Brother’s Grenade”
my brother, the Marine the recruiters come weeks earlier than agreed— arrive in alloy, aluminum with authority, military vehicle blocks our driveway announcing to the neighborhood they’ve come for a boy here who will have to go— though he sits at the top step and cries i follow them, strange convoy to Staten Island’s […]
New Poetry from Sam Ambler: “Gnats” and “Made Him Strong”
GNATS Evening fire sparking over Sutro’s rim, igniting cirrus dragons drifting away from the sun. Jules and I, enthralled. Sitting placid on the stoop outside our home. Cuddling. They swarm out of the alley from behind. Catching us. Latching hold onto each of our struggling limbs. Like gnats they buzz: “Faggots!” Stuff socks in our […]
New Poetry from Shannon Huffman Polson: “On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol”
On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol We finished our jelly beans red and yellow, purple, green, the last bite of chocolate, unaware that over in Mariupol on this most holy day sleepless mothers cradle children on a steel factory floor. Christ is Risen! But in Mariupol people lie crushed, the crossbeam too heavy, cold factory […]
New Poetry from Nidhi Agarwal: “The Goddess Incarnates;” “Cow Dust Hour;” and “Emancipation”
New Poetry by Nidhi Agrawal: “The Goddess Incarnates;” “Cow Dust;” and “Emancipation”
New Poetry from Jeffrey Kingman: “Matriarch,” “Josephine Marcus Earp,” and “Marching: Sophia Duleep Singh”
MATRIARCH ninth great-grandchild spits up peas seventh and fourth declare themselves winners I bundle the children into categories high-shouldered daughters gobble minutes trikes in the hallway my sidewinding wisdom laughs into a hanky why is it I depend on the perpetual tweed skirt try reading a mother nursing triplets attagirl I suppose getting it right […]
New Poetry from Laura King: “Orange”
ORANGE It’s June, and a few stubborn ones still hang on the trees. We stand on the back of the pickup to pluck one— so easy to peel, this old girl the sun has sugared since December’s sharp tang. Now it’s sweet as honey, sweet as candy, sweet as that boy child who wrapped himself […]
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Our Backyard Apocalypse”
We set small bowls of sugar water
on the garden’s edge. Bees were scarce
since the freeze which had almost finished
what the pesticides had started. Still,
some survived.
Poetry from Eric Chandler: “Hetch Hetchy”
Hetch Hetchy There are two signs on The towel rack. One says, “cozy” and explains that The towel rack Heats your towels. It’s next to the switch That fires up The electricity to the towel rack. That fires up The coal fired power plant. The power plant Sends up the gas. Is the drought because […]
New Poetry from Lisa Stice: “Water Cycle”
No matter where we are, the oceans
meet us in some form.
I am small
and my daughter (who is only eight) –
is even smaller
and still, our dog is smaller
yet, then there are those microscopic zoe-
and phytoplankton
and the not so micro
fish that eat them and so on
New Poetry from Ben Weakley: “Beatitudes I,” Beatitudes II,” “Beatitudes III,” “Beatitudes IV”
Beatitudes I. The Lord blessed us with knowledge. Twin curses, good and evil. Why else plant the luscious tree there, where we were bound to find the fruit? The purple and shivering flesh never lacks in spirit. The ache and growl of our naked bellies are the price for the moment’s delight. So, we […]
Poetry by Amalie Flynn + Images by Pamela Flynn: “#150,” “#151,” “#152,” “#153”
SPIDER / 150 Thick in Louisiana swamps Atchafalaya Basin Hot cypress shooting out Stretching in that bayou Where pipelines Pumping black gold oil Cross across the swamp Like spider veins. TRACKS / 151 How I find tiny cuts The skin of my inner Thighs outer lip my Labia Cuts from his finger Nails […]
New Poetry from Virginia Schnurr: “Touchstone” and “Valentine for Lewis Carroll”
TOUCHSTONE My child’s fairy-tale quilt is frail: the wizard ripped, the prince bald, the fairy’s wing clipped. Only the wishing well and frog prince survived camp, college, the conception of my grandchild. My eldest daughter wants the irreparable repaired for her daughter, Maeve Arden, named after a Shakespearean forest. No longer willing to stitch painted […]
New Poetry from Marc Tretin: “Justin Alter, Slightly Drunk, Addresses Maya, Who Is In Egypt” and “Maya Ricci Alter After Excavating A Pyramid South Of Zairo”
JUSTIN ALTER, SLIGHTLY DRUNK, ADDRESSES MAYA, WHO IS IN EGYPT Now as I am hungover and queasy stumping about the tilting house and sappy as my face is green, Maya, your sculpture of Qetesh, that goddess of sex and ecstasy, whose torso of clear pink plastic has a heart made of puzzle pieces dangling from […]
![I, born from the womb of
my mother’s remembrances
wrapped in the cocoon
of her story[...]](https://i0.wp.com/www.wrath-bearingtree.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/IMG_2980.jpg?fit=576%2C1024&ssl=1)
New Poetry by Michal Rubin: “I Speak Not Your Language” and “Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad of Jijlya”
I, born from the womb of
my mother’s remembrances
wrapped in the cocoon
of her story[…]
New Poetry by Scott Hughes: “Still”
STILL I never thought of you as a hopeless romantic; this was news to me. Are you still meditating? Meditate on this: You can take the Mulholland Highway across the ridges of two counties and stay high a long time. We parked there once in your subcompact in love and unconfined. From the afternoon […]
New Poetry by Chris Bullard: “All Wars Are Boyish”
All Wars Are Boyish Autopilot on self-destruct, we went joy riding on tanks into the thermal wasteland. The static of roentgens played like parked ice cream trucks on the detection equipment. Playgrounds went incendiary as squalls of cluster bombs skipped over the pavement, but our camo HAZMAT suits insulated us from the acts we […]
New Poetry by Rochelle Jewell Shapiro: “Each Night My Mother Dies Again”
EACH NIGHT MY MOTHER DIES AGAIN Each night the phone rings— Your mother has passed. Each night I expect to be relieved, but night falls on night. Each night she is the mother who makes waffles, batter bubbling from the sides of the iron, the mother who squeezes fresh orange juice, and serves soft-boiled […]
New Poetry by Stephen Massimilla: “Wounded”
WOUNDED —to Laura Bleating thing without wool Thunder without sound Ghost of wooded peaks, of constricted arterial waters There is a dog inside the heart, voice bursting Interminable silence, blown-open iris Over organs buried deeper in the earth where capillaries of roots still bleed orange dust Leave me be, hot tongue of fireflies, […]
New Poetry by Kevin Honold: “A Brief History of the Spanish Conquest”
A Brief History of the Spanish Conquest Tell me again of that fabulous kingdom where a single ear of corn is more than two strong young men can carry, where cotton grows untended, in colors never dreamed of, to be spun by gorgeous slaves into garments that lie cool as cornsilk against the […]
New Poetry from Gail Nielsen: “Something Like Nightfall”
SOMETHING LIKE NIGHTFALL something, like night falls slow, as if nothing in the world has ever moved but distant hope descending, still ablaze days soften to wonder what else leaves silhouettes these black lace trees fades from me it is you from my life steadily, quietly as celestial movement
New Poetry by Doris Ferleger: “Praying at the Temple of Forgiveness,” “Internal Wind,” Driving Down Old Eros Highway,” and “Summer Says”
Praying at the Temple of Forgiveness for Zea Joy, in memoriam Last Monday you threw yourself, your body, dressed in red chemise, in front of a train. It was your insatiable hunger for a more tenderhearted world, your husband said at Shiva. Now no one will get to see what you saw from inside […]
New Poetry by Mary Ann Dimand: “Earth Appreciation” and “Lusting, Stinting”
New poetry by Mary Ann Dimand: “Earth Appreciation” and “Lusting, Stinting”
New Poetry by Ricardo Moran: “ABBA-1975” and “On the Street”
ABBA-1975 Abba’s lyrics, like water shot from La Bufadora, mingle with volcanic steam from metallic pots of corn. And the scrape on my knee from chasing the seagulls bleeds, but does not hurt. On this Sunday, the ocean breeze slips in gossip between vendor stalls as young men in speedos walk past. Tables of silver […]
New Poetry by Michael Carson: “Politics”
Politics Every 20 years or so boys dress up And kill each other for fun. It’s the way of the wrack of the world The wind of our imagination and our love. To blame our costumes for our beauty Is like to blame our bruises for our blood. The chime is what drives us, what […]
New Poetry by Kevin Norwood: “Rabbits in Autumn”
RABBITS IN AUTUMN Who will find our bones in a thousand years, bleached and brittle under the unyielding sun, scattered in dried grasses by feral dogs or vultures? Who will hold such curiosities, not knowing that we stopped here to kiss and murmur that our love would outlast the moon and stars? Who will hold […]
New Poetry by Joddy Murray: “Aphrodite Urania,” “Chronos After Castrating His Father,” “Grandpa Uranus, Rainmaker,” and “Uranus’ Genital Blood”
Aphrodite Urania From a womb of foam I came to be a woman, heavenly gestated from Father, who also brought weather, seasons. He is a castrate and timeless, the bluest of planets. As a warrior, my courage is to stand by my brother while his hunger weakens him, devouring days, years – his children. […]
New Poetry by Emily Hyland: “Rehab Day 1,” “Rehab Day 4,” “Rehab Day 9,” “Rehab Day 11,” and “Rehab Day 19”
REHAB DAY 1 He hadn’t told me, hadn’t stopped drinking drank beer in the hallway near recycling where people bring garbage and broken-down boxes he guzzled, and I was here on the other side of the door thinking him sober, reversing redness and the inflammation from an otherwise young and healthy liver and I […]
New Poetry by Maggie Harrison: “Clutch and Bless”
my heart is a raspberry juicy yet taut fragile temporal eat it now before it degrades and leaves a tasteless piece of itself smeared on the basket. my raspberry heart lives in the moment but not my gut my gut dreams unpredictable digesting whatever latest bout I’ve consumed pandemic fear fear of white supremacists […]
New Poetry by Carol Graser: “Parkinson’s Triolet” and “Summer Isolation”
THE WIDENING FAULT / image by Amalie Flynn Parkinson’s Triolet I cup the base of your skull, catch precious cells spilling out like salt that seasons your limbs, your unholy lurches I cup the drumbeat of us, mis catch the rhythm, drop plates with a crash You feed pills into the widening fault My palm […]
New Poetry by Betsy Martin: “About What You Have,” “Female Figure in Photos,” and “To Missoula”
GRASSES QUIVER BEFORE / image by Amalie Flynn ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE In my dream Dad, age one hundred twelve, has his first cell phone— big and square, with a rotary dial. With a proud index finger he dials my mother, gets her voice mail. Together we lean in, listen to her low, drifty […]
New Poetry by Suzanne O’Connell: “Airport Luggage Carousel” and “Shipwreck”
Airport Luggage Carousel A battered cardboard boxholes punched in the sidetied with frayed ropelid popping upplastered with masking tape, wrinkled.One lone orphangoing round and round the luggage carousel,heading nowhere.Packed in chaos.Full of soiled clothesbloody Kleenexunpaid billssplintersand Dear John letters. This is what the last year has been. So I imagine the contents differently.I imagine gold […]
New Poetry by Saramanda Swigart: “Reckoning” and “The Small I”
RECKONING don’t worry about mei am not well but you’ve worried enoughmy prosperity has a body count— this shielded fleshconspicuous & allowed to bebalks at being back- ground— this mouth taught (without being taught)it is clearest & loudest & purestsquirms when it must shut up & become ears— i do not know how to be […]
New Poetry by Ben Weakley: “In Some Distant Country” and “How Will You Answer”
In Some Distant Country We have seen this before, in booksand on the screen, like dust plumes risingin some distant country. Except,some distant country is Michigan –armed patriots (terrorists)in the marble halls of a statehouse.Long guns and body armor.Stars and bars on the flags they carryand nooses for the nervous traitors (lawmakers)who can read the […]
New Poetry by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky: “In And Out Of Time,” “In The Wake Of Our Lady Of The Double-Edged Axe The Notorious RBG,” “Prepping For Apocalypse,” “Sideswiped,” and “The Queen Of Souls”
IN AND OUT OF TIME In the fire-eaten landin the smoke-drenched airPUT CHARACTI dream PUT CHARACTCrystal Lake PUT CHARACTsquare raft afloatPUT CHARACTat the center I in my clodhopper shoesin the patchwork circle skirt I made myself PUT CHARACTin my hippie days have jumped in the laketo show my solidarity with forestmountainsancestors with glittering Crystal Lake I swam […]
New Poetry by D.W. McLachlan: “Tanana River” and “The Heaviness of Age”
Tanana River We followed your Hilux along the riparian zone,a green snake blooming through the desert brown,when you met in secret like lovers, and the way youhugged each other in greeting showed an intimacyI didn’t particularly want to consider at that moment. The second before the Hellfire splashed down, youlooked into the sky, and I […]
New Poetry by Tony Marconi: “Song of the Roadway Door”
…three hundred miles,PUT CHahead the road more visiblePUT CHas the land dissolves in the pink light PUT CHARAPUT CHARAPUT CHof almost dawn you sit beside me,PUT CHeyes fixed and restful on my face,PUT CHoffering hot coffee from a thermosPUT CHPUT CHARAPUT CHARACwhile the farm newsPUT CHARAPUT CHARAPUT CHAbreaks morning musicPUT CHARAPUT CHAPUT CHARAon a local […]
New Review from Amalie Flynn: Jan Harris’ “Isolation in a Time of Crisis”
The poems in Jan Harris’ Isolating One’s Priorities in a Time of Crisis are about the apocalypse. Or after. What happens after. &After the apocalypse happens. After the world cracks like an egg.Splits apart. The crushed eggshell membrane and how.Covered in fluid yolk we emerge blinking – we pass clement evenings foraging among the […]
New Interview from Larry Abbott: Suzanne Rancourt on Poetry, Myth, Nature, Indigenous Life
Suzanne Rancourt’s new book of poems, Old Stones, New Roads (2021) builds on the work of her two previous books (Billboard in the Clouds, 2014, and murmurs at the gate, 2019). She dedicates the book to her grandmother, Alice Pearl, “who told me stories of where each stone came from that she used to build […]
New Poetry by Sam Cherubin: “Don’t About Not,” “Mermaid Tavern,” and “Emerald Inula”
Don’t About Not If I can’t or think do it like I’m doing now a beach sun holding me I am holding space not space itself not looking being gathering toward me sun’s filaments fluidity is all I need Mermaid Tavern A night-wind touching bare backs lying downand bare arms spooned across my bed, […]
New Poetry from Alison Hicks: “I Took A Walk With A Friend” and “Untitled”
I TOOK A WALK WITH A FRIEND Instead of starting a poem I told her about my son’s first semesterAs long as he’s home & happy & in one piece, she told me Worry squeaked out my sneakers onto wet pavementThe rest dissolved with the pitcher of margaritas Though it was wet […]
New Poetry from Amalie Flynn: “Married”
For twenty years I have been marriedto a morning. Of blue sky that stretchesand pulls across me like water filling upa suburban swimming pool. The pit thatformed a hole. The bodies falling downas if bloodless dolls instead of kneecapsand muscle shins and thighs hot fingersletting go of metal or chests and ribs anartery that runs down […]
New Poetry from Gladys Justin Carr: Numbers
that night we forgot for a whilethe broken country where we livedin hearts discontent walking backwardinto unicorns, rainbows, butterfliesgrazing beauty until blood oaths shatteredand you left, the hard leaves crying outunder your step it was good once, you saidwell, thank you for that, you touched my facea scribbler’s tender touch, is there a better waythan […]
New Poetry from G.H. Mosson: “Warrior With Shield”
after Henry Moore Blasted, broken to frag-ments, left arm won’t—both legs blown &absent, the spaces abuzzw/ anger—but I edgeforward, shield upas leg-stumps toefor foothold. My mouthis an X. Still-ness. Yet I see. I’ve been left. Moonlight emptiesonto my chest,rivulets downin a branching sheen& I swell w/ a hunchI’ll make itas if an old tunewarms the […]
New Poetry from Barbara Tramonte: “Tailored To Fit In”
Somebody sewed me with a stringOn the biasI was gatheredAnd about to pop This has been a pattern all my life They hemmed me in with notionsEach stitch bringing meTo a false whole (I longed to slit my wrist) I jolted with a shock of recognitionTo see that I had drifted to the wrong side
New Poetry from Alita Pirkopf: “Roadkill,” “Sounds of the Past,” “Spring,” and “Unhealthy”
ROADKILL I bring you blood in buckets,a heart that I hear, a palsied hand.It has been eight, tenyears, my issue.The same as twenty years agowhen your father feltabout me as you do now.I felt the world shrinkbut I thought something,not necessarily the world,would end. I had not thoughtthe world lay flat, as Renaissancecartographers mapped it.But […]
New Poetry from Jesse Frewerd: “Symphony”
Ballistic medleys project ambition, while dancing tones find their pitch. There is unexpected buoyancy in our youth. March, advance, train, drill, prepare, disseminate. It’s the 4am ensemble, time to crescendo awake for guard duty. Report to post, front gate, alert and ready. Hours, minutes, seconds, tempo depends on the action. The symphony begins with an […]
New Poetry from Ron Riekki: “my”
my brain was left back in the war, the burialof civilian-normality, how my amygdalakicks out the ladders in my head, fallingdecades, erasing exes, fought for my nationand now, hibernation, isolation, chairsstacked in front of my bedroom door whenI don’t sleep at night, the end of the worldin my head, the tingling headaches in myhead, […]
New Poetry from Hannah Jane Weber: “My Childhood Smelled Like,” “Surprise Dawn”
MY CHILDHOOD SMELLED LIKE cabbage, salted tomatoes, and cracklings.the flume of dust I awakened when my fingers untangled the shag carpet’s red mane. crayons I melted against the wood stove, our terrier’s feet, with that same scent of fire. night crawlers, shad, algae, and lake,blanketing our boat after a morning of fishing. Dad’s scrapyard, fragrant […]
New Poetry from Kevin Honold: “Elegy for the Emperor Frederick II”
i.view from Emigrant, Death Valley The snowy Amargosas kneel beside the salt flats stained with the blue shadows of clouds and the fading paths of walking rain. The bitter dust comes back to life. Dervishes of gypsum and borax spin across the basin, divine conjurations here and gone, celestial legerdemain. The winds entice them, no […]
New Poetry from Alise Versella: “Parallels,” “Red-Breasted Sparrows,” “I Wonder If History’s Men Knew They Would Be Great,” “A Fierce Sense of Resolve”
PARALLELS The birds with convictionTap out their lyrics in the snowAnd their chatter descends upon the mountainsLook how the flowers still struggle to growLike lungs filling with airThe soft despair of endings of so much life livedIt must be writtenAnd then it must be sungLike the chorus of a sun after a lightning stormThe bees […]
New Poetry from Tyler Vaughn Hayes: “They even pipe it into the bookstore,” “His first time: flight by ropes,” “The edict,” “Rappel annuel”
They even pipe it into the bookstore It’s never quite silent, though there’s no lowing, not from God nor his glutted blind bovine. Only the thudding of shuffling ungues on stereos hemmed, hidden in the high grass—muzak piercing through, prodding each tagged ear. Far better this way— now they needn’t contemplate the cacophony in BARN […]
New Poetry from Andy Conner: “Apples,” “Untouchable,” “Remanded In Custody”
Apples‘The landmines are just like apples’Khmer Rouge survivor Apples can peel your skinLike it isn’t there But more often than notThe cruellest fruitSucks the rusty blade And leaves threads Dripping Threads of skinThreads of your lifeDrippingSeeds onto barren ground You mean nothing to the applesYou mean nothing to the applesYou mean nothing Their anaesthetic mindsHold […]
New Poetry from Lauren Davis: “The Flowers You Brought Back From Italy”
Each time I open my notebook the pages stick.Because I’ve forgotten. And onto the ground they fall:royal purple flowers fall out,emerald stemmed, blue veined,life from the coast of Italy. You pulled them from the earth,pinched their feetwith your fingertips, you breathed into the sea and thought of the way my hair swayed between my shoulders,while […]
New Poetry from Scott Janssen: “Bottle Tree”
On my first visit I askedA stock question about Whether you’d been in the military. Marines, nineteen sixty-six, you said,A hint of menace in your eyes. I never talk about it. On my way out the door I asked your wife about a Tree in the front yard, Its branches capped withBlue and green and […]
New Poetry from Nestor Walters: “Homecoming”
Only the dead have seen the end of war –Plato he lies down, finally to rest. grey light bands his closed door with no silver at the edges. They said he left one foot in the sand. wait, a head no, a hand. the pale orange bottle, only dust at the bottom, slips from his […]
“Art-Making is My Light:” An Interview with Poet Suzanne S. Rancourt
As Suzanne Rancourt notes, her work is a bridge between disparate worlds, attempting to make connections between these worlds, whether they be the Indigenous and Anglo worlds, or the worlds of the veteran and the civilian. Her poetry (but not only her poetry) reflects a healing process that involves artistic creation as a method of […]
New Poetry from Sheila Bonenberger: “They Gave Their Lives”
The brass buttons are piled in a bowl that sits on the shop counter beside the cash register, so I buy one,watch as the clerk drops itinto a paper bag, gently folding the open end overso the button doesn’t fall out. Such are the tender considerations we resort to when it comesto Union buttons minedfrom […]
New Poetry from Mack Freeman: “Death Row Butterflies”
Gossamer wings glintRazor wire gleams in sunlight Death row butterflies
New Poetry from Ben Weakley: “Checkpoint,” “There are 4 Ways to Die in an Explosion,” “Good Friday,”
Checkpoint The car came from nowhere, it came from everywhere – white blur and tire squall,a four-door payload of heat and pressure and steel. When it is over, there is justthe tinkle of falling brass and a manslumpedin a pool of broken glass and coolant on hot asphalt,calm as a corpse. Doc cuts his shirt.His […]
New Poem from Nazli Karabiyikoglu: “Hymn: A Coffin at the Gates of Topkapi”
The head, decapitated,it sits on a shore, at some corner of the world.Desperation is what they feel as blood gushes out from the half-neck.Death, however, has always been there,nothing new, an enslaving event.The name of the deal was predefined –“flight”. It has been around since the Order of Assassins.Part of us see the beauty […]
New Poetry from George Kramer: “Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother,” “Google Earth”
Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother Budapest, Hungary. December 1944. This stagnant end squats over its vile startFaster than a speeding bullet! from the slag pile, the louse wasteMore powerful than a locomotive! the fecal secretions of warLeaps tall buildings in a single bound! the girl’s father was sought forIt’s a bird, it’s a plane, its […]
Poetry from Westley Smith: “Homecoming,” “On Not Dying,” “Nocturne”
Homecoming He doesn’t feel quite right, being there—same house, a little run down, dirtierthan he remembers. They smile and shake his hand,escort him to his room—with everythingjust where he left it. +++++++++++++++++++++Then, they surprise him—they leave. He hasn’t been alone in years.When night arrives with no boots to shine, no weapon to clean or letters […]
New Poetry from Jacqlyn Cope: “Mission 376: Patient X,” “Prolonged Exposure Therapy,” “Doxies and Rum”
MISSION 376: PATIENT X There’s dirt in his mouth now you know that for sure. There’s Earth inside his bloated belly you know that for sure. The worms might have eaten away his ragged skin by now but the metal is still there. Splayed on the satin or cotton lining like sad coins […]
Poetry from Dennis Etzel: “The War in Coming Out,” “The War in Men,” “The War in their Duties”
The War in Coming Out Today we honor those soldiers who fought for our country against oppressing forces. It was a matter of showing up. Like Leonard said, They gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. Howard told me how it was a point-blank question in the draft […]
New Poetry from Mbizo Chirasha: “Casava Republics,” “Sad Revolutionary Lullabies,” “Rhetorics”
CASAVA REPUBLICS Juba Child of lost sperm in sunsets of political masturbation Wagadugu Deadline of our revolutions Darfur Constipated stomach ,disease ravaged, bloodless dozing monk. Nairobi Culture lost in the dust of Saxon lexicon and gutter slang Soweto Xenophobia Drunk and Afro-phobia sloshed. Marikana Cervical blister of the unfinished revolution fungi. Harare Corruption polonium deforming […]
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Mosul Reflections,” “St. Martin in the City,” “The Rearview Has Two Faces”
Mosul Reflections Ten years and the place is not the same. Memory of green hills in a dry land,cratered by what fell from the sky.I don’t know whether to trust the imageon the screen or the one in my mind. One I only knew as Sayyd gave well water,sweet tea and mince meat on laffa.We […]
“What Is The Name Of Your Dead Horse”
We start again:With promises made for silver pass, platinum deferment,tithing calls go out to the faithful wealthy,subscribers to the graveyard newsletter.Minute Men race for lifting choppers.Laughing to say, “Your war this time,”Buffalo Soldiers rattle dice on the hangar floor.Bayonets strike when the Continental Army razesriver villages, hospital ships at the pier.Raid command reminds, “Steel does […]
“Daily Exercise”, “America”, “I Tell My Children”
daily exercise (haiku) my morning poemshave begun to sound like Tweetsfragments of bird song America we best reflect the spaces between us when we stand together I tell my children to clean their own roomsto play fair and make rightto always dothe best they can. And then I apologizethat I am not leaving thema better […]
New Poetry from Chad Corrigan: “Hidden Mountain Tops”
The top of the mountain is hidden.It looks like a cloud of smoke.But it’s a snow filled cloud.The map says it’s thirty-seven hundredand sixty-nine feet.The clouds must be about thirty-four hundred.From their helicopter cockpitsthey still look updwarfed by the mountain and ceiling.Small against the storm.
Two Poems by henry 7. reneau, jr: “watch what they mouth say, but listen what they hands do” and “The Book of Hours”
watch what they mouth say, but listen what they hands do i grew up hearing certain accents & vocabularies & speech patterns that were the aural essence of Home or the audible signal of danger: the feral howlof incarceration, or the sudden voicelessness of the morgue, that makes Home a muted whisper of fear, or […]
New Poetry from Eric Chandler: “The Things You Leave Out”
The Things You Leave Out after Yamamoto Jōchō, Jim Morrison, and Robert Frost You quote One cannot perform feats of greatnessin a normal frame of mind. You leave out One must turn fanatic and develop a mania for dying. You quote I drink so I can talk to assholes. You leave out This includes me. […]
Poetry Review of Jabari Asim’s STOP AND FRISK
1. They say Stop-and-friskIs a brief and non-intrusive stop of a suspect.Which can be deadly in America where Statistics show being black in AmericaMakes you a suspect Even. When you aren’t. 2. They say In order to stop Police must have reasonable suspicion of a crime.Which can be deadly in America whereStatistics show being black […]
New Poetry from Matt Armstrong: “Covid Night”
Paris sirensPewter skyThe white laceOf a dogwood boughAt midnight Reach upClutch and huffHungry before bedFor the sweetnessOf a rose But a dogwoodIs a dogwoodAnd there’s no escapingThe sentenceFor the world: The old blacksAnd the new poorMust die From the bugsAt the grocery store Drones police the distanceBetweenNew YorkersRobots shout from spring sky:Stay away While sanctionsStrangle […]
Poetry by Stephen Mead: Remembering Beirut, Halloween ’83; Map Pins; Forced Labor
Remembering Beirut, Halloween ‘83 The ground beds a stuffed effigy with bulging leaves.Through peculiar affinity it resembles some soldier. Notice the guise of these clothes.Consider its uniform grubbiness. Be a witness. Here is frailty. I lug the dumb body as if carrying my own reflection. In another land some marine is dragging the dead weight […]
Hostile Threat Detected: Adrian Bonenberger Reviews Joe Pan’s “Operating Systems”
Joe Pan popped up on many veteran writers’ radars in 2014. He had recently written the first great poem about what let’s call the Global War on Terror, “Ode to the MQ-9 Reaper.” At that time it was possible to find the poem in pdf via Pan’s website; it may be that this is still […]
A Poem from Colin James: “Dinner at the Masocis’t Hand Peninsular”
The smell between fingers is unmistakable and now my head aches like an ocean’s despair at not being awarded significant status, the stigma all abutting in the flotsam that takes credit for, or an investment share. Sometimes you can sit and not smell it but for only a […]
Three Poems from Suzanne Rancourt
The Shoes That Bore Us It is a dream of kind slippers that coddle bunions appeasedby hands mittened as the same kind slippersholding warmth as forgiveness for all the combat bootssogged by brackish muck of warswhen not hoisted in the occasional stilettos of never regretsa conundrum of cognitive dissonance stabs the dreamsof where ever we […]
Poetry Review: “The Light Outside” by George Kovach
George Kovach’s poetry collection, The Light Outside, begins with a narrator who’s stuck holding open a window. He’s a little embarrassed about it. The window, that is. He accidentally painted over it a few years past, in a hundred-year-old house, and only just now has gotten it to budge. And so, finally, holding it, he’s […]
New Poem from Olivia Garard: “Hurry Up”
Hurry up – Halt. And quiet, Marines sleep. – Covers askew necks cocked weighted by the waiting. Dozing softly in dark down- time flutters by. – Sweet & sour breath bellows, flickering life. Bellies swell & roll heaving hearts into a billowing pyre. – Ares kisses each Achilles slowly. From his lips— welding dry ice— […]
Poetry Review: Graham Barnhart’s THE WAR MAKES EVERYONE LONELY
1. The book arrives. By mail and on the cover. There are clouds. Gray clumped in altostratus heaps. A military helicopter headed. Into thick sky that stretches off. The bottom right hand corner of cardstock. Or how the title. The War Makes Everyone Lonely makes me think of 2007. How my husband deployed to Afghanistan. […]
New Poetry from Amalie Flynn: “Celebrate”
1. Celebrate them. 2. Celebrate the soldier who went to war Just to kill. This soldier accused of shooting and Killing civilians. How the men from His own platoon. They say he did it. He shot civilians. He shot at civilians. Shot a girl in Iraq in a flowered hijab In her stomach. Blooming wound. […]
New Poetry from Paul Lomax
Faces oak branches reach through villages veiledbeneath nuoc mam frowns, — enlightened cracks creakabove unwilling spillsleaving every chào buổi sáng […]
Poetry from Bryan Blanchard: “Pillar of Salt” and “The Mannequin”
Pillar of Salt Raining fire, burning steel …And now I see haunted Images of headlessBodies bathed in bloodstained Sand of a mannequinHead with a swollen face And lifeless eyes lookingBack at an explosion, A disfigured HumveeStaggering down the road, A charred and gaping door,A torso hanging out – The Mannequin I am not a mannequin!I […]
Forgive Me
I have confused the bombs that were in the desert with those birth control devices implanted in the uterus Forgive me, war and women, I know nothing of either
Landslide / For Byron Who Was Separated From His Father At The US-Mexico Border
When you left Guatemala. Crossed the border Into Mexico. With your father or How there was a smuggler. Who Took you. On foot. All the way to America. How the truth is. When You went down the road and off Of the mountain. Where you live. Have always lived. How you did Not think. […]
New Poetry from Aaron Graham
PIXELATED WOMAN, WEBCAM SHADE Pixelated woman, even your shadowI know as my lover.It whispered.Ash-white dry-erase lipspart with a foreign tongue.A felt-tip that deletesas it divines.Voices like accordrip frets, necks, and tones. Lately, you’re singingdisjointed love dittiesto abscond almighties. I spend my nightin ichor rivulets & “I miss you”trying to coax it back. III / […]
Happy Birthday, Afghanistan
October 08, 2019 The war in Afghanistan is now old enough to go to war in Afghanistan. Yesterday the war in Afghanistan, first to fall under the catchall designation of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), turned 18 years old, meaning that individuals who were not yet born when it started are now old enough […]
Poetry Review: Aaron Graham’s BLOOD STRIPES
1. I’m reading Aaron Graham’s war poetry. And I think violence is a volcano. How pressure builds. Between layers of rock. Trapped in a chamber. Or when magma pushes. Fissures like rivers. Up through the upper mantle. Finding surface. How it erupts. Spews hot lava and ash. How bodies can blow. Apart and across a […]
New Poetry from Michael Chang
the secret life of simon & the whale the boy inches close to the water barefoot backpack slung over one shoulder he plays with the sand dips his toes in his name is simon simon is my human i quote mean girls: “get in loser, we’re going shopping” he giggles he likes ranch dressing but […]
New Poetry from Edison Jennings
A Letter to Greta “…so pitying and yet so distant,” Cecil Beaton Among my father’s posthumous flotsam recently washed up in my house, I found a letter, postmarked 1928, addressed Miss Garbo Hollywood Cal (Private!), stamped RETURN TO SENDER, sealed unread and stored for sixty years inside its author’s desk. Held to light, the envelope […]
New Poetry from Abby E. Murray
Gwen Stefani Knows How to Get Everything I Want It takes a misdelivered Cosmo to finally understand what I want and how to get it. Gwen Stefani tells the truth on page 89. We believe in Gwen because her apron of chainlink stars sparkles over a black bustier; star-spangled bondage, says an editor. She slouches, […]
New Poetry from John Milas
Parade the Beef “I declare this meat tasty and fit for human consumption.” – President of the Mess, CLR-27, Landing Support Company, Camp Lejeune, 2009 we charge our wineglasses to toast the dead marines of the eighteenth century the nineteenth twentieth twenty-first century their immaculate ghosts seated in the empty chair at the tiny table […]
New Poetry by Antonio Addessi
You’d caught
the big one they said, you’d hooked a willow and
sank thigh deep into the muck. They hung up
when I asked if they’d bring you home.
It was late and I had my rollers in.
New Poetry by Aidan Gowland
Breathless If you say “I am not a monster” Into the mirror and turn around three times A better version of yourself will start to take root in your heart. If some nights you cannot make your mouth say the words, If you cannot make your lips make the sound, It is okay to […]
New Poetry from Liam Corley
In Which I Serve as Outside Reader on General Petraeus’s Dissertation [The current version of the Army’s Field Manual on Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, originated as a doctoral dissertation written by David Petraeus at Princeton.] Premise flows from premise like water over the edge of a waterfall, entrancing those not caught in the turbid spray, those […]
New Poems by Alex Pitre
Slurry The bones had been surrounded by years of suppression, political amnesia, and walls of loam that contained not much more than clay. Now laid out in some large building on the edge of some town, these amalgamated bones or the unidentified relatives of them know the name. The smell fills up to the rafters […]
New Poetry by Denise Jarrott
manhunt will I always be poor always a slowing of small pittings where roots were milkweed meadowsweet rue or pink lilies on a backdrop dark, blooming rather against than next to themselves vibrating against the black soil deep as a hole in the ground and quick to wither, water swell into a dawn dark, […]
New Poetry from Shana Youngdahl
After the Maine Tin Min Company Prospectus, 1880 The earth has veins we can open with our hammers. Follow the cassiterite crystals down where the iron dark is picked by the swings of men who name minerals by the feel of them on damp fingers, the bands of elvan quartzite like the rough footprints of […]
HOMEBOY: New Fiction from Mark Galarrita
I went home to Jersey only once since the enlistment. I had to see my Ma. Back in the summer of 2011 I finished Basic and Advanced Individual Training for Cav Scouts and thought I’d officially become a real patriot now. The son of Filipino immigrants transformed into a proud, government-paid U.S. Soldier. A real […]
New Poem by Eric Chandler: “The Path Through Security”
my family lived there before it was Maine before this was a even a country they still live there so we visit we fly in and out of the Jetport we place our shoes in a tray empty our pockets on the way home out west the guy asked which one of us was Grace […]
New Poetry from Frank Blake
We came home And had nothing to do and nowhere to go and too much freedom and money and space and women and cars and booze. No more mission Like a marathon runner collapsed at the end of a race and across the finish line and not really sure how to stop running or what […]
The Hundred-Year Itch, or Remembering The Great War
Here are some facts about The Great War. It started in 1913. We know that from books. and the scarred nobles grandma met in the deli off 23rd and 8th, Ich hätte gerne eine Bratwurst they’d say, eyes scared red. It was my fault; I must admit, quanta exist in different places and in […]
New Poetry by Amalie Flynn for the WWI Centennial
Zone Rouge (for the centennial) 1. When the land was. 2. Full of bodies dead. And twisted. 3. When the fighting was. 4. Sustained. 5. With bodies. Dead. Twisted on a riverbank. 6. Wrist bent. Hand hovers. Over water. 7. Dead bodies with fingers. Like feathers. 8. Stretched feathers or the calamus. 9. Attaching to […]
New Poetry from Randy Brown
victory conditions My father taught me to say I love you every time you stood in the door left for school went to work flew off to war it became a habit a good one like checking the tires or clicking your seat belt but now every conversation feels like a movement to contact we […]
Our Personal Community by Curtis J. Graham
It was in the news. On a bright summer day in Helmand Province, Lance Corporal Wickie did his duty and killed an insurgent. A suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into the berm of Outpost Shir Ghazay. Wickie returned fire, then applied a tourniquet to someone’s wounded leg. He earned a Combat Action […]
Shining Light on the Darkness: An Interview with Patrick Hicks
Andria Williams: Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I’ve just finished reading “Into the Tunnel,” the first chapter of your new novel, Eclipse. I was struck as always by what an immersive, detailed world you create, the tension you achieve, and the beauty and specificity of your language. […]
“All. art. is. political:” An interview with Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales
Our two featured poems for the month are selections from Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales’s anthology, Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando. Here, WBT editor Andria Williams interviews the two editors about this unique, gorgeous, and necessary passion project. As Morales describes, The pieces in Pulse/Pulso came from the initial days and months after the […]
New Poetry from Nicole Oquendo and James A.H. White
The following poems are reprinted with permission from the anthology Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando (Damaged Goods Press 2018), edited by Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales. to be born by Nicole Oquendo my spine is queer, curved enough to hold me up while the news bends and sways us. every day we […]
New Poetry from D.F. Brown
So, Who Wants to Walk Slack? Because we have no home in language We keep memories there As if the past were true And grinning in a grainy b/w Teenagers posing johnwayned Twisted into facts Jungle-wise who knows What grows there deep All night knotted in your heart Form mangles with content Hear clouds scrape […]
New Poetry from Janaya Martin
More Than Twice She said you better hush before he comes back in here like she knew who she was talking to but didn’t She was me and he was the mistake you made more than twice but he gave you a daughter who gave you trouble, sometimes. this is what women do, talk nonsense […]
New Poem from Jacob Siegel: The Old Gods
The Old Gods (No. 9, 2003) I. The towers bloomed up in the dark Like nails scrolling from dead fingers While around them a languid curtain fell In drifts of violet gas that settled on the roofs All of us honeymooners and mourners Aware of ourselves as objects in a landscape That held above the […]
New Poetry from JD Duff
Night Flash You’ve been having nightmares again. The cruel shaking of a body resisting slumber. Hands twitching, chest jerking to beats of unknown song, playing over and over like memories you sold at a tag sale, buried on the Tuscarora trail, dumped in a white room at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I awake to the moon […]
New Poetry from Yuan Changming
[anagrammed variations of the american dream] A ram cairned me In a crammed era [where] Cameramen raid A dire cameraman [or] Arid cameramen [Becoming] A creamed airman [or] A carmine dream A minced ram ear [a] maniac rearmed As freedom turns into a dorm fee Democracy to a car comedy, and Human rights to harming […]
New Poetry by Sherrie Fernandez-Williams
she be like, damn she be all tired. she be like a flattened house shoe she be full of compunction she be remembering what was said. she be told what she deserves. she be believing everybody. she be weepin’ in the bathtub she be like her momma, she be lying. she be saying it’s the […]
New Poetry by Liam Corley
A VETERAN OBSERVES THE REPUBLIC AND REMEMBERS GINSBERG America, I’ve given you all, and now I’m less than one percent. America, fourteen-point-six-seven-five years of service I can’t characterize as other than honorable, three hundred ninety-one days pounding dirt in other people’s countries, and one hundred seventeen sleepless nights per annum in perpetuity, September 11, […]
New Poetry by Lynn Houston
You Leave for Afghanistan If I’m writing this, it means I can’t sleep and that the rain outside my window drops blindly in the dark. The crops need it, the cashier told me earlier, ringing me up for a pint of milk, making small talk, making change. And now the tipped carton has marred the […]
New Poetry By Abby Murray
13 WAYS TO APPROACH A THREE-HEADED DOG I. Those who tell you to carry raw meat have never met me. Bones are better, they last longer, but if there’s no bones to be had bring peanut butter. II. In this analogy I am always Cerberus. My beloved is inside, changing. When he wants me […]
New Poetry by J.E. McCollough
Kintsugi The breaks on my soul Are only ever repaired Slowly. Old pieces Of the broken bowl, Fixed Back into their usual places With silver. With gold. Molten laces gleaming Across my chest, Across my beard, And spreading from the corners of my eyes.
New Poetry by Lisa Stice
Headstrong I’m sorry catches in the throat and bruises in that wavering hesitation like a rock falling back to earth. See how it curves under the skin, twists and cuts as it hugs the voice box. I forgive sways like a tamarack— hackmatack, red larch, juniper, larix laricina—of the low-lands with roots […]
New Poetry by Amalie Flynn
POLLINATE When I dream about the words They fall from the sky. Dropped From planes that hover and the Words are dropping and dropping. In clusters. And again and. Again. How the words are dropping. Like Bombs. I wake up my husband. Shake his Shoulder. Our two children. How I shake their shoulders and […]
New Poetry by J. Scott Price
Captain Who? That gut-black October night, a security patrol set out: a platoon of Afghans and two of us. They, cloaked in toughness; we, in mountains of gear, humped an unseen base plate of irony that chuckled, unheard. Since the first tribes found common ground with naming a common foe and Allies first […]
New Poetry by Aaron Wallace
Blackhawk Truck 2 is hit, and they’re calling for the medic, and I’m out of my truck kneeling next to the driver – I could hold his organs in my hands. At the top of Stanley Road Tim the Chip Man sings steak and kidney pie, steak and kidney pie, oh my my, I love […]
New Poetry: “Layla’s first buck” by Denise Jarrott
her father said it was his favorite thing about her, that she was a hunter, like he is. she holds its head up for the picture. she wears an orange hat. now the deer unfolds from itself like the fortune telling paper folded and labeled with possible outcomes. the deer’s eyes dark and its body […]
New Poetry: “What Great Grief Has Made the Civilian Mute” by Jennifer Murphy
To watch soldiers load into planes on television To ignore veterans who manage to make it home To cry out when an airman murders four of your friends To never question the valiance of combatants To have visions of your father stabbing you to death To lose your sight in vodka and cigarettes To flee […]
New Poetry by WBT Editors
This special September Poetry & Fiction issue brings you poetry by WBT Editors Adrian Bonenberger, Drew Pham, and Matthew J. Hefti. Photo Credit: philmofresh Poetry by Matthew J. Hefti Poet, Why do you speak of beauty? Why do you invest in currency that pays no dividends, in one drop of dew on a thirsty […]
Poetry: “A Beautiful Day to be Buried” by Julia Wendell
The sun was shining violently, as if on a mission to see beneath the surface of things. Our cortege wormed its way past row on row of identical white markers, the grounds immaculately groomed, (Not even a single dandelion, the brother noted), and visitors searching for Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. As if we were […]
New Poetry by Maurice Decaul
U S Grant on the Disbanding of the Iraqi Army I heard thunder in the mountains witnessed soft amber lightening in the clouds saw in the saplings, & yearling whitetail, promise. When I reached out to take Lee’s hand to shake, I noticed also, the newness of his uniform recognized that my own had been […]
Poetry: “Last Night I Prayed for Rain” by Mary Carroll Hackett
solstice moon rising early, joining me to wait for the short night, long sun. Last night I prayed for love, for what there is to be won in the soaking, the drenching, the washing away. Last night I prayed to be empty, to be full. The moon fell behind clouds, behind my wanting, but not […]
New Poetry by Yael Hacohen
Fortitude Seven times I’ve been to the Wall to scribble my prayers and fold them into the seams in the yellow stones. The walls of Jericho fell on the seventh so I elbow my way through the crowd to put my ear to the stones and hear the horses surround them, but the wail of […]
New Poetry by J.J. Starr
Concerning whether or not I am a horse I strap torso & press arms to diaphragm with breath deep the distressed voice of mistress mumbles wishes amid plum trees & white headlight bum-rushes the alleyway— Am I a horse kicking at its leathers? How many full rides & how should I count? Thought made in […]
Poetry: “Departure” & “Respite” by Justice Castaneda
Departure Once upon a time, I know I had a plan. Going to come back, finish the conversation. Keep all of the promises, About how it all connected and why There was so much there To dream. Overwhelming really, even takes the breath away, Freefalling, I let it subside, and the memories fade; […]
Poetry: “Nostos” by T. Mazzara
i. the deadweight of a crooked hook we crossed any strange boundary in our youths. all amongst some hitch in what aught-wise (or maddenin) might normally be tattooed the standard trajectory of a set, masculine life. unvigorous, but then: the word appropriate means the same as mediocre. pretend studs, almost in-step, fat ϗ nasty no-names […]
New Poetry by Randy Brown
Toward an understanding of war and poetry, told (mostly) in aphorisms Poetry is the long war of narrative. Poetry, like history, is subjective. If journalism is the first draft of history, poetry is the last scrap. Poets set the stage of victory. Just ask Homer: Who won the ball game? Do not make fun of […]