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editors' select: results 1–24 of 38

Love Poem on a Monday Morning with Mock Complaints, Unreasonable Wishes, Your Name and the Earth for Good Measure  by PAUL GUEST

4 November 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

I'll complain of my bones,

I think it's safe to say

and I'll worry the miles

we never drive. I'll say your name

when I shouldn't

to every door barred before us

as if you're known in Belize…

Fourth Song of the Child Soldiers  by ADRIAN LURSSEN

25 October 2007
Vol. 7, No. 3

Case of ditto for eating meat.

Copper rings for arms and

Above the knee. Arm rings

Made from Elephant's teeth.

Ditto ditto for eating meat.

Contrition  by TODD FREDSON

11 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

This match-head's

halo of flame

is another, sudden wall. Outside the barn's

now lit follicle, you are face down

as if you had fallen without instruction.

A Flock of Iagos Waiting in the Wings  by FRANK MONTESONTI

2 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

I saw the story of a man with a condition

called the Capgras delusion who believed

all his loved ones were carbon-copy imposters.

He wasn't frightened; he didn't think his parents


were reptiles in rubber suits or Iagos…

Your Laundry on the Line Like a Giant, Breathing Beast  by MARTHA SILANO

2 April 2007
Vol. 7, No. 1

Your laundry on the line like a giant, breathing beast,

like the billowing sheets above the alleys in Trastevere,


where mothers yell after their children Vieni qua! Vieni qua!

while underwear sways like language itself. Rippling and tossing…

Postscript  by JENNIFER MERRIFIELD

19 March 2007
Vol. 7, No. 1

Barefoot under a borrowed poncho, we touch

(misused synapse to misused synapse)


but wonder where are the fucking marshmallows?

Medusa Ghazal  by JAMES R. WHITLEY

2 March 2007
Vol. 7, No. 1
ghazal

And what hope does an average girl have when the gossip's

already turned her into a cold-blooded pariah, a bitch deluxe?


A spurned lover here, a few premenstrual days there and I'm

gorgonizing men in their tracks like some monster from the lochs.

Stigmata  by SUSAN SETTLEMYRE WILLIAMS

2 January 2007
Vol. 6, No. 4

Curious are the ways

holiness is achieved (that freezing

and melting point, that instant

when your perfect attention changes

and unchanges you or the world) and unforeseen

the consequences.

Ice Bone  by LAUREN GOODWIN SLAUGHTER

17 December 2006
Vol. 6, No. 4
elegy

Say the black road

is a bleached crest raveling


the one distance

meant for you (all of us).

After You Told Me You Hated Roller Coasters  by JOSH RATHKAMP

5 December 2006
Vol. 6, No. 4

We took turns pointing at all the girls who would scream.

You couldn't watch so you smoked,

occasionally glancing up at this pirate ship.

An Oracle Concerning the Melancholic Concubine  by JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

14 November 2006
Vol. 6, No. 3

Sometimes you feel you've a touch of the broken heart,

when the orchid of evening wilts into nighttime,

when the darkness is not yet deep.


When you are tipsy with the grief of his leaving…

Eulogy  by PAUL GUEST

8 November 2006
Vol. 6, No. 3
elegy

So that this will seem like words between

old friends, I'll say it was painless.

And quick. I'll say it was mercy

and behind my face where I put

things like The Truth and dreams…

Two Halves: Elegy for One Summer's Dawn  by KEITH MONTESANO

30 July 2006
Vol. 6, No. 2
elegy

Bellefontaine: a town on the way to somewhere else, a place

where you run out of gas, stop to make love on a picnic table


somewhere by the wheat field—when, toward magic hour, the boy

already loaded the gun, the smell of bacon wafting outside…

Patience  by REBECCA GIVENS

2 June 2006
Vol. 6, No. 2

bliss


comes lightly and leaves


quickly, leaves nothing


much behind.

One Half Shed as Though in Front  by JULIE DOXSEE

11 May 2006
Vol. 6, No. 1

& if he died I would hold love


in the cracks below the heart, a caged


hand waiting to enfold its animal…

Though  by KRISTI MAXWELL

14 March 2006
Vol. 6, No. 1

The little mouse has claimed the kitchen, spread out like a rind,


and under the cedar beam is you: a tent, sturdy as that—with people through the slit


that mimics a shy face in profile


determined not to full-on.

The Seeker  by CYNTHIA HOGUE

2 March 2006
Vol. 6, No. 1

For my calling I crawl,

vermin-like, through a glade with a battalion of burnt

tanks, their guns every which-way, matchsticks.

Thanksgiving Prayer Girl  by JASON BREDLE

In the big fun

disaster, I revisit every place


we loved one another and cry, I fall

asleep to the same song in the back of a Jeep

night after night…

Moment  by LAURA MCCULLOUGH

28 December 2005
Vol. 5, No. 4
elegy

There's a moment in every dog's life

when it surrenders its dogginess


to a greater good…

You Have Made a Career of Not Listening  by KIKI PETROSINO

9 December 2005
Vol. 5, No. 4
prose poem, best new poets 2006

I have stood beside you, saying this, as you reach into the cupboard for another stack of dry noodles. You eat them with the dead still on, with the sticky deadness still on…

Photograph  by SANDY FLORIAN

15 October 2005
Vol. 5, No. 3
prose poem

A likeness or delineation. Or. The application of Light to the purpose of Representation. Rather. The smallest reduction of the largest pyramid. And. The largest enlargement of the smallest microbe. An underwater waterlog of the sawfish in swim. For.

When Dogs Rule  by REB LIVINGSTON

4 August 2005
Vol. 5, No. 2

I watch the hound drape

a dead me with a red robe


instruct my child in morals,

correct my ethical shortcomings.

Latter-Day Geniuses  by ANDREW LUX

5 March 2005
Vol. 5, No. 1
prose poem

"Would you still love me if I were frozen?" my brother asks from beneath his covers.

"I would still love you even if you were an electric dog," I murmur from across the room; the room I hate to describe.

Of Foreign Lands and People  by BARBARA YIEN

2 December 2004
Vol. 4, No. 4

The day my brother brought me to the pond

of one thousand screaming white swans


it was winter in Akita.

 

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