Poetry

Verse in diverse forms, and fantastical in flavor.

…first call at dawn

phoebus apollo really starts slurring his suspicions as he stands and grabs my arm, telling me to pocket other people’s wine before we leave and follow him into the night with my arms full     ...

Galatea’s Lament

From the stark white marble block his rough sculptor’s hands freed me,shaped me into a flawless form to love, to pamper, to worship: an ideal, free of all the “vices” and “flaws” of my sex, ...

The Dark Between Cells

Geothermal, the dark between cells, humid with the buried scent of Venusian fronds. A message scrawled by wanderers in the underverse of flesh with the crimson ink that pools beneath Jupiter's storm clouds. Its words ...

sometimes skin

sometimes skin, we think stops world encumbers wind within            alertness we are small, we think listening risks too much mind wants to possess every twirl of leaf in air border condition: tense must keep out ...

Grocery Store Lockdown

“Coyotes are being seen on the empty streets of San Francisco” —SFGATE, March 26, 2020 What Is today?Does it matter? Waking Up coughingIn a panic Mistaking Hay fever For this virus  Breathing Into maskGetting light-headed Sanitizing Hands after Touching every doorknob  Rubbing Hand sanitizer onto ...

The Dream of the Green Cave

Blood falls through his bodylike a pocketful of keys tossedinto the middle of the sea. Having dreamt last night of enteringthe green cave to hurl his grandfather’spsalms & keys into the cave’s deepest wells, the ...

A More Inventive Child’s Mind: Two Poems

The poetry of North Carolina's Al Russell evokes the suburban legends, bewildering distractions and private grammar of free-range teenage life. Hanging Rock Lake And the girl flew off the cliff into the deep, And she ...

‘Everyone’s old as the cold sun’: Two poems

"He lifted the oceans into stationary orbit over the earth." Nashville poet Tom Holmes explores apocalypse, evolution and the epochal transformation of daily life in verse that vaults time and the space between stars. Transit ...

They Speak

The 3D printer transmits a signal to ZUV, tear shaped, neutral temperatures, constant sirens, no trouble just noise pollution that can’t be stopped.  The “husband” enjoys crafting interesting plastic items, especially for the “children.” When ...

Draught of Ambrosia

Caught withina glass of chardonnay,held aloft between thevalley of my palms:a globe of cobalt blue, iris, an abandoned sky. Speak, Daughter of Atlas.Tell them howwhen the rain comes, only the thirst on one sideof the mountain will ...

When Pandora Burns

Created as a foil for mankindthis beautiful messis — in truth — a beautiful box. A lacquered confectionof sculpted curvesand clever spaces containing centuries of man’s demons,her hollows bruised with man’s barbs and fears. Call her ...

(Short-Term) Darkness

I stood on the street corner and O! Theskyscraper imploded just up the street ’Twas the next neighborhood methinks.As I stood on Świętokrzyska Street,holding my briefcase, drinking my latte,a skyscraper imploded up the street. I ...

A marriage of cats

they must be held still or made to stay awake the long bus ride felt like a pupae my sunburnt back crackling to crispy bits these are the wings I wore to the wedding uninvited ...

Lead Into Gold

The ennui sets in insidiously. A blue haze creeps over the horizon that marks the edge of the kingdom. Every time I look out the window, I notice that it has spread a little bit ...

Portland Head Light, May 1973

These are the rocks I told you about. Sometimes the locals scramble down to collect dulse and periwinkles. You need a pin to get the periwinkles out, and butter, unless you’re making chowder. See the ...

Carnations, Pigeons

Every night it is the same. Her stomach rises first, lifted from the bed like a noodle across fork tines. Shoulders and legs follow, and the feet, buoyant, drift upward so that her body angles ...

Enigma

Having arrived at last you will have never left And those spires dancing in the afternoon heat are the spires of the palace of dreams Aren't they? And the deserted quay and the empty sky ...

The Scaffold-Girded Hypercube (Evelyn and Her Magic Violin)

Image: Detail from "La Modiste (The Milliner)," Gino Severini, oil on canvas, 1910-1911. The Spanish Surrealists are constructing a tesseract in my wife's dream On one spatio-temporal aspect of this scaffold-girded hypercube, a scene is ...

Four poems from “Ruins of a glittering palace”

  San Francisco Bay Area poet Maw Shein Win arranges perceptions in fragments, like the pieces of a broken mirror — or perhaps, and not so jagged, like droplets. Each distinct but reflecting some greater ...

Finding me hesitant, the daffodils fall back

Finding Me hesitant, the daffodils fall back as if they know their kind is alien here, in the preserved greenstone steppes once home to trilobites and scaly invertebrate worms. only the hardiest flowers grow here, ...