Featured Topic: Dreams
Featured Product: Seasons
Featured Writer: poets better and more famous than me
Featured Form: Rondel
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Notes from the Quarantine
Day 1 You tell yourself that you are going to learn French. Instead you make coffee with milk and tell yourself it's okay because they've yet to close the grocery stores; no need to break into the shelf-stable supplies. You tell yourself lies—that you'll use the time...
“When It’s ‘Gark’ Out”
She wakes from her nap with bedhead and pillow creases on her cheek then whispers, "When it's gark out, Momma coming home?" in toddler speak. I know correcting her lisp can wait for some other afternoon so I brush her hair back and confirm, "Yes, Momma will be home...
The Bloodred Stone
I once plucked a beach rock from his watery bed; beautiful, once brushed of sand, he did not complain, but now that he's home, he just lies there--dull and plain. Somewhere along the dirt path home he must have died. A lifeless grey replaced the impossible red, so I...
Dandelions
They say to write what you know, but what if there is nothing left to show? Nothing to paint but green on green, and all there is to see—already seen. No fresh petals curl up from the dirt, and meaning hangs like an ill-fitting shirt: stretched and shrunken, thin and...
Tooth by Rotten Tooth
Legs stirring before the alarm's tormenting beep, I wake from strange dreams in the autumn of my youth, and choke on broken promises I meant to keep-- a sludge that settles to the bottom with the truth where bottled thoughts belch the foam of cold fermented sleep and...
Wizard Nap
This dull and wintry day is still a weeping grey. But with the turning of a dial perhaps I'll force a smile by conjuring the warmth of June against this gloomy afternoon. Like a bored cat, I linger. I boil water with my finger. Yet, despite this warlock power, I mope...
Worrying the Stone
The wandering sermon has run too long and yawning congregants rise to their feet while a quavering singer strains his song, aching over the chorus he repeats repeats like a lonesome widow worrying the stone of long desires that she cannot quite complete despite love's...
He Moves the Mountains
Never have I seen blue hills above the green ripped from their bedrock and thrown into the deep. And will I ever? But have I passed through the needle's eye? Camel that I am, reborn among the sheep tramping out again to die. Image Credit to Abby Laux For more poems...
A Balloon and his Friend
The little girl did not know what he was at first— the yellow thing that did not drop if you let go. Still he filled her with so much joy she'd either burst or grow wings so she could float with him through the air. He smiled from above while she laughed along below;...
Tahlequah by Mark Hernberg
She swam to these shallow waters to give birth. Knowing only the quickening of her heart, the heart inside her; resonance of body within body, sea within sea. Her newborn calf sputtered brine, tasting the new waters. Each breath a new ocean. Again she sings him her...
At the Wading Pool
The wading pool is shrinking with the wasted sun and the yellows of summer drain slowly away exposing red bricks beneath the glittering spray. With cast-off toys and leaves littered about their feet, the bone-soaked nine-year-olds will squeal and crash and run through...
Deeper than her lungs could go: an Elegy for J35 and her pod
She let go yesterday; she thought she could let go, let him slip from her nose, and gently from the sun to sink deeper than her lungs could go; it was done. She carried her son for nine suns, and eighteen moons before. Could she let go, when the tide turned within her...
Jonah
It's told that Socrates chose the hemlock over this greater terror: banishment. But tortured Jonah, standing on the dock the hour he spied the boat to Tarshish went in secret to the furthest corner of the earth to hide his hate beneath a Spanish tent. He refused to...
The Leaves Remember
Why are my poems so obsessed with doom? Is there no light their dark will not consume, no work they will not turn into a chore, nor child they cannot drown in metaphor? Sometimes beauty is neither fraud nor thief; sometimes a leaf is just a common leaf— a welcome...
A Child’s Sleep
I wonder if the tearful child, not yet perceiving what it means to fall asleep, might believe she dies each night. Afraid to go alone, she chokes on her goodbyes, "Please don't forget me! O please leave the door ajar!" But the swallowing Unknown will not share her...