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eat like kings all summer:/ lobster & steak #poem

By | September 29, 2017

Briny and smiling, he stood
in the kitchen, pulled me over
to the pot, lifted the lid:
an odd insect with pomegranate-
seed eyes waved its feelers
like awkward chopsticks.
I pitied this fish-knight,
fully armored and fallen
into a boiling, iron bay.
As teenagers we poach lobster
after midnight to slip Gamies,
craft traps in the canyon,
smuggle them aboard our skiff,
bait chum and let them sink.
By dark we hoist stuffed
lobster pots up from the coves,
spider …

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I cough the sun out of its sky #poem

By | September 22, 2017

I cough the sun out of its sky. Letters of the alphabet hurt toward the end. Can we go on without
pronouns? There are at least five ways to say aunt which depend on age. I tear a page out of the
phonebook & place it on my chest. Wind moves through a place other than trees. When we want to
learn a language, what we find to …

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sound travels freely/ through an open window #poem

By | September 15, 2017

Knowing drifting is a process both expected and un-, some
types of animals include lizards, include elephants, include
an amount of pre-thinking to remember that sound travels freely
through an open window, that windows are good enough
and necessary for all. And summer months, we need them most.
With grasses and saplings, eyes adjust to smallness, because
to see them wave or bend gently or …

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A darkness in the road #poem

By | September 8, 2017

 
A native Floridian, Carmella de los Angeles Guiol lives and teaches in Cartagena, Colombia. You can find more of her work at www.therestlesswriter.com.

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Lucifer often leads/ in the first verse #poem

By | September 1, 2017

It’s not as thin as one might think, though
there is only one version, and each copy
features only the words—no music.
In a brief moment of inspiration, Lucifer
himself penned “God is Dead” watching
Golgotha from afar. It was popular
for a few days. Notable titles include “Backslidin’
Away,” “Every Sin’s a Deadly Sin,” “Babylon
on my Mind,” and “You Don’t Need Our Help.”
At command, the shedim and mazzikim
gather, …

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In heaven, the clouds slip #poem

By | August 25, 2017

 
Shayla Lawson is the author of the forthcoming I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean (Saturnalia Books, 2018). She is a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellow and a member of The Affrilachian Poets.

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You will face loss, but you will survive #poem

By | August 18, 2017

I.
The traveler came to a meeting of roads.
Each was marked with prophesy,
marked with loss.
The traveler chose the middle road.
II.
First road: you will give up from hunger and cold.
Second road: your horse will die, but you will survive.
Third road: you will die, but your horse will survive.
What is kindness, what is sacrifice, what does the world ask of us.
III.
You will face loss, but you will survive.
In …

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our aloneness isn’t/ bottomless #poem

By | August 11, 2017

Now we’re fissioned—it releases
enough desire to fuel the empire.
That’s my smudged vision on this
frost-fogged, steamed street
at night’s end in these bright overhead
cones and sweeping twin beams.
We are a flood of particles
stripped from our kin clusters,
spilled bridge elevator tunnel,
sluiced river of want, huffing
to fill our slots and seats, each
thriver promised the dollars
good for what? Pacifiers
to soothe our atomized selves—good
for ales or amaros, sliders or oysters,
smokes …

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words like heat rose #poem

By | August 4, 2017

 
Oscar Mancinas is a Ph.D. candidate at Arizona State University.

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to know how to call myself beautiful #poem

By | July 28, 2017

Because I could not pull the homesickness
from my clothes with all my teeth,
the skins of foreign cloth dead in my mouth,
I am the savage who tried to sew
a skirt for herself in another man’s english
and wore his eyes, like daisies, in my hair.
A jury of hands to tell me the weight of hair,
to measure my blood and its red homesickness.
Blue eyes and vomit …

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