Sara Backer – Ragged Red Line
Ragged Red Line after “Ballroom in an air raid” by William Nicholson If I had more rodent in me, I could feel safe underground shielded from hawks. My birds of prey are not bomb droppers, but my broken immune system clawing and pecking inside my body’s basement. I see the ragged red line on the […]
Jessica Jacobs – Reciprocity
Reciprocity For I was mud and you were the face pressed to mine, making me in your image. When I was a furnacing fever, you were a dousing river. I, word-hunger and you, the book by heart. I, new blooming; you, pages of my pressed petals. And when I was ambition, you were the open […]
Jared Smith – Before the Storm
Before the Storm Two days out before the storm we began gathering candles from all those places one hides them, puts them away for when needed, old ones limned with the scent of mothballs, half melted Christmas candles, whatever we could find and matches, a bic lighter, an old iron lantern and yet wind blew […]
William Greenway – Quarantines
Quarantines i Imagine the media coverage of the Black Death, whole families boarded up to die inside, the comic bring-out-your-dead carts, cameras on location by the mass graves, Shakespeare, the Globe closed, Lear televised to the yokels. Tired of YouTube, my bored daughter draws over and over stick figures with straw hair like the thatch […]
Francesca Bell’s Bright Stain, Reviewed by Cindy Hochman
Francesca Bell Bright Stain Red Hen Press Reviewer: Cindy Hochman The first poem in Francesca Bell’s sophisticated and street-wise collection Bright Stain begins, like any coming-of-age story worth its salt, with reluctant innocence. Little mouse, lying white on your side like a child in a christening dress— … but snake isn’t interested. … refusing to […]
