[She clamps the eyes]
She clamps the eyes
one last
time and begins to pluck the
hair.
She keeps their necks tied
and gallops
My father took me down to the stream and tore my denim dress. The sun tinkled on the water while I tasted it, all fish scales and mud. He stepped along the downy bank, between high scarlet grasses, broken from the wind. Eyes veined. His neck contorted with the strain of watching me float, tendons rigid. Continue reading “A Pulser Sunsetting by Rebecca Grandsen”
I am an amputated arm – trying to accept my body’s state of mind
after four hours of spasms
I went to work wearing your watch
thinking that it would hold me
closer to my body
no one noticed the ticking
I raised the mug to my mouth Continue reading “3 Poems by Jayme Russell”
Grace, he said, flickering her name. Grace, a staticky word chopped into the bottom of the sea. Soft, beery slither ran down her face from where he spat. The water came in waves and washed gold summer through her bones. He was above her again, his hair deep silk on her face. His voice was in and out below the waves. His tongue loose, wet, electric with hurt. A burned hum shuttered from his lips. Continue reading “The Sky Became the Perfect Colour and Back Again by Laura Ellen Joyce”
A7
Silent street, cinematic every time
a car, a motorcycle
someone in sharp
heels.
Every moment he could have
should have kissed her.
Couple sits in the living room,
floors below, speaks
of divine reassurance, Continue reading “3 Poems by Clare Needham”
Dead of Night Eyes
I pace inside the grip of the clock,
glide across darkening patches of linoleum,
hunting for murmurs of isolation
as disease sneaks around the edges of my sight.
I pierce the quiet, spear- like and devilish.
My pulse taps against the delicate canvass Continue reading “3 Poems by Susan Richardson”
They Caught Me Giving Them Food
they caught me giving them food so i had to stop doing it
some food which i knew they would find
otherwise it was the loudspeaker or something given me to read
they said we were the cause of war poverty hunger all their misfortunes Continue reading “2 Poems by Bobbi Lurie”
the names of swords
(something) has its own subtext
sleepingmind torturing wakingbody Continue reading “From ‘Notes on Not Sleeping’: Dream Catalogue III by Rachael de Moravia”
The First Talkie
Long hair was always the prettiest.
Select the star to supersede
what was your zodiac sign
select me to say I’m home now
home down in the woods in my pink and white dress
w/ the blue bear sewn on it. Continue reading “3 Poems by Jessie Janeshek”
[Ugly ground swell moss]
Ugly ground swell moss
finds you worth keeping
near Ugly ground swell moss knows
a face of you you cannot Ugly ground
swell moss wants you all to itself to cover
you until your surface area is its surface area Continue reading “2 Poems by Jacob Schepers”
black refraction beyond crucifix
will rail stretch surfaces’ sharp tensions?
grace-solid canal surfaces Continue reading “Stalker by Mark Goodwin”
I lost my words. I can not open the can. In the tin can, the golf balls are rolling and I lost my words. I can not open the can. In the tin can, the golf balls are rolling and murmuring. Each word takes apart inside the can and has no context already. Even though I can not pull them out, I am still here. Continue reading “I am still here by hiromi suzuki”
[Attempt 1]
Climb through the window
so I can touch your hair.
We breathe into the space
between us so grass can spread
across it without alarming anyone. Continue reading “Tercets for Remembering a Dream by Jessica Beyer”
NoOne
So we [poet + reader] thought some badness was coming
to take away our dreams: leave us without light,
leave us with our darkness. We wanted to exhibit our
dreams even though dreams are archetypes + boring
and it is so invasive when we tell others they have made
cameo in our night-visions: this assures the other
we wish to possess them in a room their body cannot
enter. Continue reading “2 Poems by Candice Wuehle”
voices given to those undeserving I see needles in this tank of water and the reflection goes blind seeing me seeing me rather emptiness than a sign of disease
the world is the world is not what you see what we see comfort and defeat go together exploration is uncalled for experimentation is blasphemous dogmatic traps Continue reading “diagnosis by Darya Kulbashna”
It’s the Wren’s Nest – part housing estate, part nature reserve – it’s the Wrenner to us.
Frogspawn slicks in silica sheets across Green Pool; carrion crow calls; the foxes den – too close to the road – vixens crushed against tarmac; limestone cliffs weathered by prehistoric waves; the underground caves – the fenced off caverns – the canal lines that vein through; rabbits, badgers, weasels; and rusted cans and cigarette buts and flytipped sacks and discarded clothes and the stained knickers of a fallen wench; limes, acorn, hawthorn, bluebell and stinky wild garlic; bell pits, old mine shafts and geological tools; dog walkers amble through slippery tributaries of homemade paths; rope-swinging kids up a height in the oaks; the silence; the almost silence; the rhizomes that pierce through earth’s hymen and tangle, conjugate, apomixis, epitoky. Continue reading “The Ley by R.M. Francis”
Walking with the canal,
flurries of all who’ve been before,
my footsteps on theirs.
Going by.
Going on.
Two swans keep faith.
Mucky water clouds,
one inversion turns another, Continue reading “Going by by Kevin Jackson”
The uneasy feelings began when we crossed the line of wire, past the guards distracted by a white delivery van. No one stopped us as we turned onto a side road. Rydell was driving, Vanya and Tori were asleep in the back. I watched the lights receding, the faint green glow on the road ahead. Continue reading “The Crossing by Voima Oy”
She fell in love with her specimen: took note of his
legs; one, a millimeter shorter than the other, lacked the
purity of hemispheric symmetry. His tiny simple eyes dilated
when the artificial light rays would refract off of the perfect Continue reading “Reintroduction to Anatomy by Elytron Frass”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 