By Meredith Stricker
I was thinking of some of the messages Rilke will never receive: — dentist called abt your appt tomorrow…
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- By Lydia Harris1
Sunday vellum tongues with words of prayer
Monday messages from the unknown
Tuesday how to… - By R. L. SwihartThe young man says, “Alan can
do anything he wants”
“Not fly,” I say
The young man returns
a puzzled look… - By Matthew RohrerReading a kind of laborious
poem about rural things
and a horse is shot
for breaking its leg.
I still don’t get it.
Surely there’s a way
to heal a horse.
I text my friend
who is a farrier
(you know—
someone who shoes horses)
I say surely there’s a way
to... - By Tomás Q. MorínIn this life, there are stars
and there are stunt doubles.
Before I became one of those fathers
obsessed with memorizing his lines,
making peace with the Big Director
in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
before all that, I was the star
of my own... - By Alison C. RollinsI am
a product
of my time.
Time is a body
that resembles
a sound without a scale.
Forever foreclosed fortitude.
In heaven, the dinner bell rings
as elegy. The porch-light stars turn
on their mothering moths. Betrayal
takes at least two, and wherever two
or more are gathered, I am... - By Cedric Tillmanyou know I ain’t mess w/you ’cause of yo’ friends
wouldn’t have you caught slummin’
know you hood 'cause you said
I look the same
and I said
you look the same
and I said “it don’t crack, doit?
and you said “Uh, OKAY?”
that’s that thing right... - By Kimiko Hahni.I am in the middle of “The Fourteen Poems" by Sun Bu-er (“Clear and Calm Free Human”), Taoist and one of the Seven Immortal Sisters who took up the Tao after she turned fifty-one, after her three children grew up,...
- By Kevin YoungThe heart, it hoards—
how I know this—
The small, strangled
shining room Keats lost
his life in—and to—
beyond the window sunlight
arranging itself
on the Spanish Steps
while the poet watches.
Outside, snapshots
of the tourists
& teenagers tired
of what they don’t
know yet. What will
become of us? Ash.
Unasking. The... - By Omar SakrA lover undresses, with permission.
Picture the body becoming real.
I picture becoming real intimate.
It is strange to think of legs as closed.
I open my legs for strangers. I widen,
stretch. What belongs here? Don’t say a door.
Instead of belonging, I eat the... - By Omar SakrI lift him out, whole and perfect.
Said told me he would be here, chained by Dante
To the eighth circle of hell, bettered only by the devil himself.
The Paris Review recapped this canto in 2014, saying
Read along! This week: Mohammed torn... - By Omar SakrI slip into my insolence, sleek as an eel.
I have walked so many ways around God I can tell you
Holiness is a roundabout
With a thousand exit points labeled doubt;
Like the boy who unzipped my pants
In my sleep, who broke the... - By Haki R. MadhubutiFrequently during my mornings of pain & reflection
when I can’t write
or articulate my thoughts
or locate the mindmusic needed
to complete the poems & essays
that are weeks plus days overdue
forcing me to stop, I cease
answering my phone, eating right, running my miles,
reading... - By Jamila Woodsi caught my breath & called that life
i cannot be comprehended
it is better to write
spit out words into small cans
prepare knives for the cutting
of orange peels and doorways
i arrive at a space that no longer needs
autumn or spring, this forest
of... - By T. S. EliotI. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest monthApril is the cruellest month The Waste Land begins with a subversion of the first lines of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. He paints April... - By Barbara Claire FreemanDear Necessity, the magnitude
and difficulty of the trust to which the voice
of my country has called arises from the recent
tempest, adopted by the Spanish to name
the storms they encountered in New Times
Roman. These reflections, bracketed
by floods,... - By T. S. EliotWebster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts... - By Joshua EdwardsI read the same book over and
over, as much to have a familiar
thing to hold as to forget how
far I am from everything I know.
Some people like their reading
and their lives complex, but I
prefer the pleasure of words not
so unlike... - By L.A. JohnsonThe book from the archive
whispers with handwriting. A gold pen shines
the name of every man,
his every hand that closed it shut.
If girls ever read, they were crossed
out. The gilded slashes still burn
the wounded. In the right environment, they say,
every cell... - By Nikki GrimesI am a door of metaphor
waiting to be opened.
You’ll find no lock, no key.
All are free to enter, at will.
Simply step over the threshold.
Remember to dress for travel, though.
Visitors have been known
to get carried away.Illustration by Shadra Strickland