TRANSFER OF POWER I press my nameplate, flushed and new, hammered onto the door. I sit in his chair, His denim jacket slumped over Sink into his seat. It’s warm like he just got into the desktop drawer as if a naughty student paper-clips, a plastic sleeve, mouth half-open, An antacid tablet releases white dust […]
Read more "4 POEMS – Roxanne Cardona"I Want Out of the Cracker Box Too I saw a student presentation about Rumi as a BIPOC poet, and all this time I had thought Persians were white. A few months later I’m reading about Robert Saleh, a Lebanese-American, presented as one of only a few BIPOC NFL head coaches, and wondering whether anyone […]
Read more "2 POEMS – Joe Benevento"Sound Check A sound check ignites a flame In a distance of incendiary nights Back and forth the ringing breaks As the dawn announces a new appetite Hendrix and Joplin overdose and die Others overdose and fly Pour it slowly little one As the thirst for more brings a new might Like a shooting star, […]
Read more "SOUND CHECK – RAMZI ALBERT RIHANI"Daring Duo Coyotes and bobcats have been spotted in my rural New England town. Not actually spotted, but there have been sightings. And not together, never together, having the same approximate jobs. Like competing dentists, we are obliged to see one or the other as they extract what they must. It was a very good […]
Read more "DARING DUO – Fred Gerhard"Blackboard Your opinion on the chalkboard, the one your teacher wipes away. You are just another student, after all. Who gives a damn about opinions, when you as a person do not matter? Stand up, get up, scream! Refuse to stand down, insistently! Go to the principal’s office. Go to the dean. Go to your […]
Read more "3 POEMS – DANIEL SCHULZ "Pods I sit on a black cushion and wonder if the electric pulses I feel are lightbody healers transmuting energy through the crevices we have created with our breaths to make us whole again. I rest my head on a pillow and imagine if the infinite impulses I feel are silver starseed-pods traveling through the […]
Read more "2 POEMS – Caroline Reddy"OH PHALLUS OF RIDICULOUSNESS Oh phallus of ridiculousness you tower over our town like a monolith fucking the sky as the denizens fuck with themselves anyway we can. Some chose to shop whilst I try to forget as life moves on in a drunken wasted state towards my ultimate escape and a place where life […]
Read more "2 POEMS ~ Bradford Middleton"The 10 Commandmentsof the 2022 Teen Creative Writing Clubof South Central New Mexico 1 anything can be poetry2 encourage others and be yourself3 things aren’t all black and white4 bad writing is better than no writing5 it’s not all about white men6 love your writing because it’s yours7 don’t forget this is a way out8 […]
Read more "The 10 Commandments of the 2022 Teen Creative Writing Club of South Central New Mexico"Continental Breakfast La Quinta Jackson, Mississippi There’s a sadness in heart-shaped waffles, in the cool flickering logs, in the tower of Styrofoam tended to by a brown person. There’s petroleum in the apparel, haircuts and politics of the others. There’s blunt force trauma in the space-age gravy, in the Fruit Loops from a wheel, in […]
Read more "Continental Breakfast La Quinta Jackson Mississippi – Tim Staley"After Ahmaud Arbery 3.23.20 His arrival here cut one background from another. Five hands sprung from each of his wrists. I wipe the ashes off the armoire. I light a new stick of incense Morning Star Mellow Pine. He sits on my sofa deliberately. The muscle spasm in his leg ribbons the room. From the […]
Read more "3 POEMS FOR JUNETEENTH BY TIM STALEY"
Cacti Fur 