Enter: The Clown.
Read MoreStill Life With Chair by Jericho Parms
The canvas hung askew. Thickly coated in acrylic, the painting bore the abstract depiction of a chair, singular and empty, in a room of three distorted walls. I didn’t recognize the painting, nor did I particularly care for it, but I appreciated the expressionist approach.
Read MoreThe Sick Diet by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
because you left a good-bye note written on paper made of mummies.
Read MoreThe Elephant by Riley Kross
My wife kept to her alcove. I kept to my nook. The elephant played between us.
Read MoreJoy and Pain, Sunshine and Rain: On Teaching/Reading Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Even when his poems take a darker turn, such as recalling the murder of a friend and colleague, or the bittersweet memory of a childhood crush who has since passed away—there are moments of true grace within these elegies—a slowing down, not in pacing but in memory’s leaps.
Read MoreSelenium Sulfide by SJ Sindu
I’m here tonight because a week ago I woke up and discovered that my inner thighs had started turning white. Not chalk-white. White-girl white.
Read MoreThe End of Coney Island Avenue by Roohi Choudhry
In this country, a man could be lost and no one would know enough to grieve, not even his own mother.
Read MoreTractor Town by SJ Sindu
My cousin is late. And handsome. And very late. And, technically, not my cousin. But sex would be complicated, and he’s probably a virgin, and his English is not so good, so I let it go.
Read MoreMy Country 'Tis: Listening to Ishmael Read by Ru Freeman
this King & Kennedy country
that fast draws
that kills slow
My Country 'Tis: Learning Their Letters by Ru Freeman
the justifiable fears
of waking from an American fantasy of arrival
in places that require defense, let him go.
A Woman Without Origin by Elaine Hsieh Chou
The woman went abroad and began to lose her grip on things.
Read MoreMy Country ‘Tis: Say My Name by Ru Freeman
they
said it was uncivil but not a crime, it is never a crime when
you die; should I begin from the beginning should I add the women,
Renisha, Rekia, Chantel, Tyisha, Yvette, Gabriella, Miriam, Jessica
My Country 'Tis: Love, Philadelphia by Ru Freeman
Rocky is a myth in the air between
us untrue things this American
dream
Limes by Alexander Lumans
He sticks his hand in his pocket for a brush but pulls out melted gray taffy instead. He thinks, can only think, of that painted tree in the rain.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Rita Mae Reese
I will give him this bird trapped in a doorway,
a mad heart in feathers and pulsing eyes.
Mockingbird by Lia Purpura
Plain bird whose one song is all songs. / Who accompanied me once / while I waited and waited and no call came / and who, for god's sake, will not stop singing now.
Read MoreOf Eagles, Goats, and Space Men by Patrick Madden
Which is to say that you can essay about anything, find some small hook in the overlooked or takenforgranted.
Read MoreVertebrae by Jess Masterton
Her bones had been bleached, stripped of all muscles and tendons, and you called me to your side as though I were your own.
Read MoreThe Madrid Conversations by Normando Hernàndez Gonzalez with Adam Braver and Molly Gessford, Translated By Cynthia Guardado
The simple act of having your rights to liberty and expression, I would say. The simple act of not being scared to say what you are thinking.
Read MoreTransmissions from the Baby Monitor by Sarah Gerkensmeyer
“You tell us death, and you tell us pain, and you tell us there are good things, too.”
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