Poems
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I can’t remember my First Memory
By Gene TantaBy now, my first memory is only a memory of a memory; a shadow of a shadow as the Buddha says. By now, it has become translated into wall-to-wall sunlight carpeting a plastic toy clip-clopping on concrete back and forth to the front gate of that house my father built with his bare hands and drinking habits with his rolled up check sleeves and his … -
Crooked as a Foreign Hat on a Foreign Head
By Gene TantaA fascist does not like to be spoken to. When others have their say, he takes it as an impudent interruption. He is impervious to reason because he recognizes it only in concessions made by others. -Adorno
What’s the matter with the way I write, asked the fingers to the hand? I must admit I still feel a little shiver when I remember the gate ajar … -
Canoe
By THEthe Poetry Public SubmissionsBy Dawn Marie Knopf
How might we & the waters labor over
now the new naming of the rapid
by those who first travel that stretch -
Detention
By Sammy GreenspanWhy must you dress so differently from everyone else
There is no room here for those without credential
How dare you interlope without credential
What makes you so special -
Via
By THEthe Poetry Public SubmissionsBy Amy Lawless
It’s been a year since that goddamned horse died
and I have yet to pick up the pieces.
It brought me water on down that road. -
Then there is this dream with its other bright edges
By THEthe Poetry Public SubmissionsBy Niina Pollari
Then there is this dream with its other bright edges,
a piece of paper spread over the flowering field,
thin as a reflection. You know what’s wound -
The Paper One
By THEthe Poetry Public SubmissionsBy Colie Hoffman
It helps to understand there were two realities
and words were in the paper one.
The other was made of clouds -
Epithalamium with Rust
By THEthe Poetry Public SubmissionsBy Brandon Kreitler
I remember the dream of rust on its own vague terms:
dredging the canal as though it were oneself,
hoping for trinkets that fix life to a landscape of flowers and trash, -
Hunger
By Chloe Yelena MillerMy hunger is a bit snooty.
I crave sugar covered beignets,
plump fried artichoke hearts,
paper thin pizza crust, -
Secrets
By Leslie Anne McilroyI am not quiet or under the din of things.
My heart — even muffled — is loud.
This is the sound you hear at night.
You won’t know how I hush in my coffin, -
My Antidote
By Gene Tantafor Mirela
I remember when I first saw you on that snowy porch in the Iowan night-shine. Tree branches were giving themselves freely to the wind and then my eyelids disappeared. “I’ll savor you like a sugar cube,” I thought, but days have a way of pouring in one ear and out the other. My muddy boots have a way of leaving muddy tracks on the Bostick… -
Dandelions
By Joe WeilGone to seed gone to
gosling, old lady fuzz,
gone from the bright
yellow, -
Traveling Time
By Lisa Marie Basilewould have never gone to another city
would have never caught the moth
and named her Sofia
would have never made milk on my own -
Dusk
By Sean Thomas DoughertySmokestack dusk dance, the swing shift from the metallurgy plant
smoking on break in the dusk, near the empty laundry mat
where I wash the dusk from my clothes, where the old women weave
the last strands of dusk with their fingers, Fate -
Pioneers
By Lisa A. FlowersShot in the back of the head that Fourth of July
Your memories only went speeding back, so many miles
In wagon trains
Before they reached the sea -
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On the Road to the Contagious Crack House
By Dave Roskosrow houses
occupied by their original owners
first generation Hungarian
immigrants brought in -
Space
By Rebecca MelnykGuess that’s it for the space program?
Lately, dreams of a body with no feet
my mother’s ashes at dusk, a baby
born from a box that is my stomach. -
Time Warps & General Douglas MacArthur Visits The MacArthur Center Mall
By Jeffrey HeckerUnfortunately, time only warps forward since the 1960s.
General’s body remains deceased, but not his spirit.
General poses: “Why’s my cinema on Level 3?”
Nordstrom shoppers can’t hear but General poses: