IMAGINE! HIS LEFT HAND CRADLING MY HEAD, HIS RIGHT ARM AROUND MY WAIST! I CHARGE YOU, SISTERS: DO NOT AWAKEN LOVE UNTIL IT SO DESIRES
I tithe 10% of my new underwear to my future
self, the one who has fallen in love.
I hide it under my mattress. I forget
to fall in love. I live until my hair is long and white.
When I die, I stick around for a while.
My future self, undulating like a moon,
discovers my stash. I watch her smooth the lace
over her hips, over her moon and stars. She fans
her fingers and presses them against her belly, brushes the tip
of her thumb against a pink bow.
But has she fallen in love? I ask. Have you?
I ask
standing behind her in the mirror.
LEANNE DRAPEAU is a teacher and writer from Connecticut, USA. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Virginia.
He sang /
like a gas station on a black summer night.
New poetry by Matthew Olzmann, Vítězslav Nezval, Leanne Drapeau, Andrea Jurjević, Sheila Dong, Richard Jackson, Ondřej Buddeus, Jeff Fallis, Stephen Scott Whitaker. Fiction by Julia Kissina, Pavol Rankov, and E.J. Schwartz. Reviews and essays by Ailbhe Darcy, Burt Kimmelman, Chris Crawford, Stephan Delbos, Michael Stein, Rob A. Mackenzie. Art by Khari Johnson-Ricks.
At the heart of this otherwise light-hearted collection are a set of relationships with archetypal men – the lover, the father, the rapist – which are explored with great care and seriousness.
You either believe Kent Johnson exists or he doesn’t. Neither is true. In his poems, translations, conceptual acts anchored on the page, Kent Johnson is there and not there.
Khari Johnson-Ricks is a New Jersey-based artist and DJ who paints, makes zines, and videos. Jessica Mensch caught up with him to talk about his art.
"There is little financial reward in publishing poetry but a great deal of satisfaction" - Rob A. Mackenzie on the origins and history of Blue Diode Press
It's a story of the fight for self...and a shout out to anyone who feels alone and is struggling to find value in that, too.
you stand a long time /
by the creek, then /
feed it two pennies, /
one for you, one /
for the love /
inside you that /
you can do nothing /
with or about.
Mark Terrill's charming, masterful, workaday, transcendental lyric poetry is more compelling than ever.
A talisman against the agony /
in his knees and hips //
for which he was taking /
black-market fentanyl
