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poetry: results 289–312 of 735

Shaving  by JAMISON T. CRABTREE

Here, a closeness is lost in our morning rituals.


Some type of forgetfulness concerning

the risks we take, the casual violence inherent

to the most mundane of acts. That's what she liked,

I think. The rough slide of the blade.

Sticking to the Form  by ELAINE OLDS

29 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
ghazal

Unlike the dress her mother wore, with long lace

sleeves and buttoned to the neck, a polite dress,


hers has a scoop neck not too low, filmy

fabric swaying with each step, a not too tight dress…

Summer  by JOHN CLARE

28 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
classic, rhyme

Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come,

For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom,

And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest,

And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast…

Craft-Class Ghazal  by MICHAEL BRODER

25 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
ghazal

The teacher's assignment: Stop making sense.

No problem; all along, we've only been half-baking sense.

An Internal Chord  by ROBERT GIBBONS

20 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
prose poem

Watched the dark come on, landing on rooftops, the civility of apartment windows & streetlights emerging with it, accompanying it like some harmony, which could only be imagined, or painted, by a Whistler, say, as far away from Lowell as he could get…

Book Lover's Club Minutes  by KEVIN SIMMONDS

17 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
prose poem

The minutes were read and we dealt with all at hand: the Club tea, Wright and his "Black Boy," alms to the poor, and the Urban League's request that all Negroes stay away from the State Fair.

Tornado  by KEVIN SIMMONDS

15 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

We huddled in the fallout beneath the house

like we'd done each time before.

My brother and me.

The bass droned long enough for him

to unbutton my jeans.

Hex of Six Lines  by DAVE DE FINA

13 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

It is found in everything given,

that the parts of our everything


are more than ever less in form

and only more in number.

Ni Te Cases, Ni Te Embarques  by DIDI MENENDEZ

11 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

I wanted to tell you there are mushrooms

sprouting from my toes

You said you were going to mow the lawn

I wanted to tell you there is a foot of snow

outside of Miami in the summer

Works of Mercy  by NEIL DE LA FLOR

6 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
prose poem

The fisherman threatens to climb philodendrons with daisy cutters. Threatens to mount his motorbike barebacked. Ursula emerges from behind stacked bricks. Like hyenas they thrash in ghetto-rage.

Aphorisms for Frida Kahlo  by NEIL DE LA FLOR

4 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
prose poem

In 1972 Stephen Hawking postulated the existence of bone-crushing black holes where nothing could escape, not even a gizzard, or light. Hawking has changed his mind. Now he proposes that information can escape, a radiation of a peculiar sort, one that can transmit bursts of black light like a Britney Spears concert.

Why?  by NEIL DE LA FLOR

2 August 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
prose poem

Because his penis was there in my hand as a butter knife would have been in my hand if I was about to butter bread. I wasn't about to butter bread or say no but I was happy nonetheless. It was a little weapon, a toy.

What was it like?

It was like he wouldn't listen to me but listening to me the way our father would listen to us with his eyes closed nodding yay ya, yay ya.

Ghazal for a Comfort  by AMY O'HAIR

27 July 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
ghazal

Wrinkled new red body, startling in the empty air, once blanketed

by mother flesh, now swaddled tight in an imitating blanket.

Sexual Illiteracy  by JOHN W. EVANS

24 July 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

For weeks, the visiting priest raged about the love of Cain and the sins of Adam


while, on break at the drugstore, I read letters to the editors of pornographic magazines.

So many young and horny housewives, so many sodomized waitresses!


High, I climbed Jim Corder's roof and watched his older sister skinny-dip.

An Eighth Lesson in Magic  by KRISTINE ONG MUSLIM

19 July 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

In the living room is the built-in weather

from the air conditioner. The walls are

swollen in certain places away from her

reach. In the absence of miracles, the pot

simmers a new husband in the oven.

you and mornings  by TONY MANCUS

13 July 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
prose poem

In the morning my face wears wrinkles. Pants face. Sleepy pants. Face of demonic possession and lack of caffeine. God then is the sound of the faucet, the coffee dripping.

some hazards of the course  by TONY MANCUS

10 July 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

I wish I could make you come

near, not worrying about fish or what your father

might think about the size of whatever's in anyone's pants. Our skin

peeling back like winter's slow walk across a continent.

No me juzguen si me gusta el vino  by CAROLINA VARGAS

Don't judge me if I love wine

if I like fire

when it's alive.

Compassion of the Sentence  by LAYNIE BROWNE

29 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

Today is ten days, which are one week and three days, of the Omer


Be compassionate for no reason


because you live in the middle of a sentence


at any point suspended…

Eternity of the Sentence  by LAYNIE BROWNE

26 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

If you love the sky as you become vastness, blue is no longer


a color separate from expanse. You have only to remember


to enter this aerial sanctuary.


I should be sorry to transport myself so carelessly.

Florida Room  by ERIC BLIMAN

23 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2
ghazal

Might some young Einstein not re-fuse this bleak-appointed nucleus,

Retool its quarks, by Bunsen's blue-tongued flame, into Florida?

Parted Blinds  by JASON FRALEY

17 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

Somehow, my organs are ordered and operating. But I always carry this

briefcase in my right hand.

Contrition  by TODD FREDSON

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.

Burning trestle, a refuge for prayer and grieving  by TODD FREDSON

8 June 2007
Vol. 7, No. 2

A patrolman approaches. I pull a seam of sod underneath

the picnic table and hide the stash I was given. All of the milled

wood is rotten. The boardwalk is dark and spongy.

 

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