by Paul Hostovsky My thumb is pushing the thin metal thumb-lockof the screen door up and down, up and down,locking it and unlocking it—click, click, click, click—while I gaze out past our tiny poor excusefor a backyard, just big enough for a tetherball pole.My mother is sitting at the kitchen…
by Paul Hostovsky My thumb is pushing the thin metal thumb-lockof the screen door up and down, up and down,locking it and unlocking it—click, click, click, click—while I gaze out past our tiny poor excusefor a backyard, just big enough for a tetherball pole.My mother is sitting at the kitchen…
by Paul Hostovsky “Have a blessed day,” she said.And it sounded new, different, positive-ly numinous. So I said,“You have a blessed day, too,” and I floated out of therewith my coffee and corn muffinand beatific smile. But nowevery time she rings me up she says it. Every time.No variation. No…
by Paul Hostovsky They’re talking about tying teacher payto teacher performance,and tying teacher performanceto student outcomes. They like to use words likeoutcomes. They probably don’t readmuch poetry, whoever they are,and wouldn’t know a good lineif they wrote one. I remember Mr. Westrich though,my seventh-grade English teacher, who diedin a boating…
by Zachary Jones Living in the shadowsI became a prophet.Learning everythingThat no one can teach Here alone nowI’m in perfect companyThe waters around me are my fortress walls. I see the future,In seashells and ripples.They tell me of heat waves,They speak of great wars. In hot fever dream state,I saw your god running.A…
by Sam Barbee Silence, our first lie. We perch pacified, feastingwhen fed. Ignore plagues and storms outsidefavorite outlet stores. Mediocre menaces inside.Nothing allowed to interrupt our next shopping spree. We grasp self-assured bounty. Seed by seed yieldsuncherished. Flourishing timber now blunt-cut boughs.We shell-out admission to Joni’s Tree Museum. Pilgrimage there in…
by T.J. Masluk Neighbors mostly young— seen from my porch, washing their cars, trimming the leafy hedge, iPhoning Mister and Missus Jones. Me? old and languid, whiling away the hours staring at darkened factory windows, remembering Main Street, magical shops and immigrant folk I see (and hear) even now through the eyes of…
A poem by Bart Edelman
in 1923, guitarist, composer, and poet Agustín Barrios underwent cosmetic surgery to become Nitsuga Mangoré
A poem inspired by May Swenson.
by Vivian Pearl I see a young woman,A white blond girl with her hair shaved high above her scalp, a holy blond child sitting in her fifteen-year-old lapShe looks over him with pride and joy.He is not the destruction of her future but her future itself, her only future. These…