What do the dancing white birds say, looking down upon burnt meadows?
Read MoreBodSwap with Moses by Wendy Rawlings
Manuela in scrub top and cheetah pants hasn’t even finished telling us what to expect from our new bodies when the Kenyans stride in on their excellent legs.
Read MoreBafflement, Clarity, and Malice by Joe Bonomo
How can something I don’t understand come to mean so much?
Read MoreFour Poems by Nathalie Handal
I asked you not to hurt me
the way history did
How to be Powerful and Triumphant and Lonely All at the Same Time: The Many Changes of Greg Cartwright by Joe Bonomo
Cartwright’s history in bands is vast and eclectic, a testament to his tireless energy, his craftsman’s work ethic, and his love of playing live and with others.
Read MoreDon’t You Know That It’s So? By Joe Bonomo
And yet this is how memory, song, and story conspire: I will eternally shame myself with this small incident, and two unrelated cultural moments—a graphic catastrophe, a silly song—will be forever entwined in my mind.
Read MoreThe Archivist of Baghdad by T.L. Khleif
The archivist read the words again and tried to ignore the stirrings of a new fear.
Read MoreIn the Morning I’ll Rise Above by Joe Bonomo
Saturday night brings both pledges and lies of limitlessness, of a night never ending, a jukebox always playing, dance partners always spinning, car wheels revolving on roads that never end in daylight.
Read MoreThe White Death By Justin Hocking
I contracted my own White Death back in graduate school, when I was first assigned Moby-Dick, and had to wake up at five or six a.m. to swim its immense dark waters.
Read MoreThree Poems By Kwame Dawes
I heard something other than
the chattering of birds in the trees,
something like the hint of music
The Other Bill by Steve Almond
When my husband returned from Afghanistan, we hoped our lives might go on much the same as before. Bill hadn’t been in much danger. We’d been married for ten years. We had the support of good friends and a large extended family. Our two little ones were healthy, and within a few months of his return, a third was on the way. It didn’t seem unreasonable.
Read MoreHold Your Phone to this Essay and Select Tag Now by Joe Bonomo
I left the bar humming bare traces, the final moments of the song like excavated bones, already fading in the daylight, in the archeology of my head.
Read MoreKablooey is the Sound You'll Hear by Debra Marquart
then plaster falling and the billow of gypsum
after your sister blows a hole in the ceiling
of your brother’s bedroom with the shotgun
he left loaded and resting on his dresser.
Flower Gate and Sea of Gallilee By Kazim Ali
My disobedient body pierces the I
Music drifting landward hand in hand
Two Poems by Charlie Clark
The cafés have a kind
of tea that is just
the temperature and taste
of air breathed in summer
Mama Loved the Ways of the World by Joe Bonomo
Genuine? It’s hard to tell. What does the kid singer know? Does he really understand the burden about which he sings, that his mother’s naked shame buys him his clothes, the complications at that intersection?
Read MoreTwo Poems by Gary Jackson
Men smoke on Hagwon-ga, eyeing
the dark borders of my body.
Panel Discussions: Just Imagine by William Bradley
Just imagine—there I was, standing in line at the Shop-N-Go convenience store across from the country club where my parents played golf. My dad and I were running some errand that evening. Most likely, we were getting milk. We rarely bought groceries at the Shop-N-Go—they were cheaper at Kroger’s, but Kroger’s was farther away from our house. If I had to guess, I’d say my mother had discovered that we didn’t have enough milk for breakfast, and so my dad was sent on a quick trip to remedy this. I went with him because we had recently spent a long time apart—he had moved to West Virginia ahead of us, several months before the school year ended. I had missed him terribly and took any opportunity to be near him. This was the fall of 1987, and I was eleven years old.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Shelley Puhak
I’ve seen and Ginny, darling, I can no longer breathe. I got off
the interstate, cut through an industrial park, throbbing.
At a Loss by Jacqueline Lyons
Maybe I was always going to be divorced, turning away from marriage before marrying.
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