Ken Holland – How Quiet the Words

How Quiet the Words You lean towards me             the way a whisper leans into intimacy             or how rain strips the sky down to no other purpose but its own. I know no more of you             than summer knows the dark eclipse of its heat             when the earth wanders away from the long light             like a […]

Diane Gottlieb – Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car

Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car after Kelli Russell Agodon I wish I’d kept going. Going. My sweet petals to the metal. Burning rubber, stamens, stems. “It won’t hurt,” he said. “Just a tickle.” Uncle Theo’s breakfast. Whitefish breathing down my neck. Like the woman who drove to work crying […]

Steve Cushman – December, 1974, West Wareham, Massachusetts

December, 1974, West Wareham, Massachusetts I remember snow blowers and hot chocolate, Charlie Brown on TV. My sister and I snuggled beneath the heavy blue quilt. My mother across from us, in Dad’s oversized chair, smoking Parliament 100s, with Jiffy, the black mutt, on her lap. And I remember having to pee but not wanting […]

Charles Rammelkamp’s The Trapeze of Your Flesh, Reviewed by Robert Cooperman

Charles Rammelkamp The Trapeze of Your Flesh BlazeVOX Reviewer: Robert Cooperman Charles Rammelkamp has lived in Baltimore long enough to know all about “The Block,” that regal, or infamous, stretch of real estate that was once home to some of the best-known burlesque houses and strip tease artists who ever strutted their less than fully-clad […]

Gerald Locklin’s requiem for the toad: selected poems, Reviewed by Shawn Pavey

Gerald Locklin requiem for the toad: selected poems of gerald locklin Edited by Clint Margrave NYQ Books Reviewer: Shawn Pavey Pick up any small to mid-sized poetry publication issued over the last forty years and, most likely, it will include a Gerald Locklin poem. When I served as an associate editor of The Main Street […]