The hotel where I worked saw a pilgrimage then of portly old men with mustaches and cabbie hats, their stomachs tucked into ill-fit jeans. They came into the lobby weeping, clutching at their thinning hair like the oracle at Delphi, asking God or me or whoever else was in the room why this had to happen to those beautiful machines.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Jane Zwart
"My dad is not making it up, but art cannot/ leave freak beauties be. He will have to add more—/ a plastic bag snagged on a sapling’s ankle—"
Read MorePregnancy, Art, and Censorship by Sarah Dalton
To the best of my knowledge, unless you include women’s private photo albums or personal social media feeds, there is no Madonna with Gestational Diabetes, Madonna of the Amniocentesis, or Madonna of the IV Tower and Labor and Delivery Room. I feel kinship with these images that portray the complexities of being pregnant. They challenge the demands for silence and censorship around experiences that do not follow the prescribed, imposed narrative of a joyful and celebratory pregnancy. These images revolve around loss, distress, powerlessness, a beauty often called grotesque, and, despite all its astonishing advances, a medical system that sometimes leaves more questions than answers.
Read MoreThree Poems by Mykki Rios
"how do you play hand games with ghosts/ expect souls to hopscotch the river styx/ let favorite toys become grave markers"
Read MorePusha Man by Evan Massey
“Breathe, dawg,” I declare to one hand-length worm. Because I want everyone and everything I love to breathe.
Read MoreReflection in the Waiting Room of the Dermatology Clinic by Lucas Jorgensen
"the only one/ whose shore has shifted, flesh expanding from one bone/ to the next. A jagged coast…"
Read MoreHorses by Walter Weinschenk
"We run as one, staunch, impassive, each of us different, all the same: bay, roan, pinto, palomino, as many types as there are dreams imaginable but we rush as one array, jet-like above the gravely ground at horse-speed, a single panoply that thrusts forth in perpetual motion and straight pursuit, headlong into pitiless wind"
Read MoreAquifer by Sean Theodore Stewart
"When I spoke, I surprised myself by saying things I had been too bashful to admit to the aquifer before. I gushed. I waited for her response. The water enveloped me."
Read MoreA Normal Interview with Béatrice Szymkowiak by sami h. tripp
"I think art holds the power to shift and multiply perspectives, which the world desperately needs right now. Single-mindedness is dangerous. What I love about poetry in particular, is its capacity of subversion, of dissent, against ideas but also against language itself, as language and ideas are intertwined."
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