I licked a leaf
I licked a leaf by Ron Antonucci You think me mad but licking a leaf is the least of it. I could tell you about the smell of a hummingbird’s wing. I could describe the sound of a rock as it cracks in its growing.I have witnessed the drip and streak of stars as they melt across the deep dark.I know the feel of water as it shudders into ice.I’ve heard the heartbeat of a caterpillar and listened to the soft cry and song of a dandelion as it goes from thick and yellow to whitened wisp.The pulse of pebbles on my palm… So, yeah: I’ve licked, I’ve tasted a leaf.Like all things within reach of the tongue, the hand and the heart, I can tell you that it is bitter, and it is sweet. Poetry Home Art by Alice Stone-Collins
And After, No One Lowered Their Flag
And After, No One Lowered Their Flag by Matthew Williams Shift in the viscera’s tectonics. Your body was to be as any other glass chapel in a fracturing land: code blue, cold lips the color of early light at dawn. Yes, it seems, even in death, some part of us succumbs to American pageantry: the way your hand clasped your heart as you collapsed to the hardwood. This is what I hold in mind in study of broken windows, the pattern of fracture, its dendritic limbs, the ever finer fingers reaching into what once, with clarity, held, as it passed, life. If you were here, I would ask, if you believed we can grasp, not the instance alone, but the act of shattering, if the hairline break in the ankle bone of some fossilized ungulate is an inscription of structure governing prey and predation, given as I am to seek the grand abstraction that poses as explanation, and thinking, if the dead know anything, they must know the sound of that biggest symphony, where we hear nothing but the pluck of one string. I am still listening to particulars still listening to the misdiagnosis, still seeing the orange morning opening like a crusted wound above the gas station and the man who watched me careen into the parking lot, roll down my window, and shout, Where is the hospital, in silence, turning his back. The owners, days before you died, asking you to just do your best to manage the finances from the ICU. The insurance adjuster’s dulcet hiss in the phone for days. You, twisting in the front seat of that red hatchback at a red light, a scream scoring your throat: a note sharper than a neighbor’s glare—another glass shard fallen from the broken anthem of this breaking place: the hometown, the county, the country where we found ourselves lost, when you said from the bedroom floor, hand over your heart: Don’t call an ambulance. I can’t afford an ambulance. Poetry Home Art by Morgan Auten-Smith
Away We Go
Away We Go by Claire Wahmanholm My question for love is this: how do I livethis way. Which way does the breath go. Which waythe blood as it runs. If I am alive and in love, how long will it hurt. Away we go, I say, climbing into the boat I did not make but every night am made to trust. I practice letting go: one beat, two beats, eighty per minute. Death has mowed more and more of the meadow. Each day I have fewer questions but they are all about pain, and what I would do to survive it. Or not, being un-brave. I wave and wave at my swimming daughter, whose stronger arms pull her from me into something stranger. Poetry Home Art by Cynthia Yatchman
Poetry_V16-1
Poetry Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Girlhood Sonnet by Sophia Ivey Poem Volume 16.2 when i say my father is homesless, i mean: by Harley Chapmen Poem Volume 16.2 Gub Dog by Addy Gravatte Poem Volume 16.2 Šljivovica by Celeste Colarič-Gonzales Poem Volume 16.2 Heart by Theo LeGro Poem Volume 16.2 The More We Go The More We Don’t Know a Thing by Briel Felton Poem Volume 16.1 Away We Go by Claire Wahmanholm Poem Volume 16.1 Dew on the Sea by Claire Wahmanholm Poem Volume 16.1 The Cabinda Spouses by Landa Wo Poem Volume 16.1 And After, No One Lowered Their Flag by Matthew Williams Poem Volume 16.1 Afterbirth (fiction) by Rachel Stempel Poem Volume 16.1 Biological Speculation by Briel Felton Poem Volume 16.1 I Licked a Leaf by Ron Antonucci Poem Volume 16.1 i bleed for the first time on a toilet in Versailles by Sirka Elspass (translated by Anne-Sophie Balzer) Poem Volume 16.1 Nothing is more sad than a waning moon by Sirka Elspass (translated by Anne-Sophie Balzer) Poem Volume 16.1 I have two DNAs one belongs to my old by Roman Iorga Poem Volume 16.1
Afterbirth (fiction)
Afterbirth (fiction) by Rachel Stempel Today’s horoscope told me it’s okay to lie.It’s not that I need permission but I need something. (Apparently this is self-sabotage. Or, at least, the reek of desperation.) Last night the way the hallway backlit her bedhead turned me—I don’t want to hurt you, really, but I don’t care if I do. (If you think you’re using me it won’t be that bad.) Sometimes God speaks to me through the Telehealth waiting room and the electric hum of computer silence is hymnal. Sometimes God speaks to me through the Telehealth waiting room and the message is swallowed with one-hundred silver bullets. I may’ve stolen the blueprint for my inner world but now it’s as mine as anyone’s: desert oasis, never enough money, every permutation of man. And all sound delivered through an unplugged box TV while someone who is not me (honorific) watches the longest baseball game of all time. (Someone who is not me is: a fire escape; the last yellow raincoat in Moscow; a pocket watch that fits so well in the mouth it settles into the palate—diagnostically speaking, a torus palatinus: still too much but at least hidden.) I am learning how wrong I am about everything and this is not how I wanted my year to start. It was only last month I finished taxonomizing the past year’s guilt so it looked like I’d some to show. (I’d gotten work-high in the spreadsheets and thought I must be getting better.) Tucked away in grooves (first, of your arms; then, of your chest), tonight I will sleep to be rutted the same. I do my best work before bird-dawn. My sex is goal-oriented but the best sex is a bad sentence: bleating and in need of a tourniquet. Naked, before a range of immutables can interrupt. The bouquet vending machine replaces your phonetics. We recite sound, slaughter—my shirt smells like it, like blood. I try to sound what out through cryptic fingerings on an invisible clarinet. You misread the notes. It’s natural to do so. Tell me something. Anything. I’m an excavator of meaning even in the smallest sample. Stop. I’ve no frame of reference for abundance. I’m so something, it’s impossible. (Or, at least, the reek of desperation.) Poetry Home Art by Keegan Baatz
i have two DNAs one belongs to my old
i have two DNAs one belongs to my old by Romana Iorga self the other one is my sister’si don’t know how to write about illnessi write about fall fever & hopesomeone would read between the linesthere usually was someone who would check my pulse draw blood hookme up to an IV change my bedsheetswash the floor the toilet the sinkbring in the food close the blinds wipeoff my sick change my bedsheetstake the food out uneaten help meto the bathroom no modesty leftafter a while even when i wasdischarged what’s the point everyonehad seen everything i never feltmore unseen except that daysomeone stopped outside my reverseairflow room & peeked in she waspale she was old she was wearing allblack for a moment i thoughti was a goner then she moved on & ilived down the hallway someonecleaned out the room for a new patient Poetry Home Art by Morgan Auten-Smith
The More We Go The More We Don’t Know a Thing
The More We Go The More We Don’t Know A Thing by Briel Felton Even the yellowjackets are confused. The mosquitos, the wasps & the bees all in a tizzy. Say brotha it must be August, but I don’t hear the cicadas hollering with those big ass lungs. What the fuck is happnin’? There ain’t a flower to steal or skin to bite into. Just yesterday sweat pooled above my lip in the middle of this hot ass winter. I don’t know what’s going on and the yellowjacket who decided to use my apartment as hospice, don’t either. He asked to bum a cig. I told him I don’t smoke, and he let out of a string of obscenities which you do when you’re dying. I offered him leftover lentils. He looked up at me slow. Sweet cakes, you’ll never stop being confused ‘cause small patches change just as quickly as the world does. I ask him how he knew much about the restofthaworld. Television. I’ve heard your prayers at night. Begging. Bargaining. Answers don’t really do much. Might I suggest not looking for them. Just— & and the damn ministering yellowjacket croaked and I sucked his corpse up into the vacuum and finished the lentils. Poetry Home Art by Suzanne Benton
Biological Speculation
Biological Speculation by Briel Felton I bought the green carton of Newports. Lit one to time it and gave the rest to someone in need: a 14-year-old asking me to buy a 6-pack of beer in the 7/11 for him and his friends. I wonder if they are pretending to be their fathers. I thought my gift would take longer to kill them. So, these are the wonder years. All I know is the suffix -ette denotes something small. Cigar+ette= a little bit closer to it. Is the ‘it’ all we branch our organs towards? Like a little death, a deathette. I have things to learn. I still don’t know when to replace my underwear. I am an empty milk carton licking at the asphalt. The most astounding thing about us is we are made of the same things as a pile of dirt & no matter how many cigarettes we light the body talks us back to life. I’ve held my hand over a flame before. I pictured myself jerking the wheel too hard on a highway. 7 billion billion billion atoms decided to be me. What were the meeting notes in this urgency? In the second it takes to light a cigarette; my body has made a million red blood cells. I’ve prayed and cussed just as many times. Cells are irreversibly dying and I’m not so sure leaving anything behind will fix the flood. It depends on how much you inhale but it took about 7 minutes. The inhales were uncareful and maybe then I realized the expanse of lungs and their capabilities. Poetry Home Art by Peter L. Scacco
Example_Poem_v16_resp
She by Harry Potter Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poetry Home Art by Samantha Park
Example_Poem_v16
Poetry Home Art by Samantha Park She by Harry Potter Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works? Poem Poem Poem Poem Four feet per line is pretty fun insert a good poem here across at least two stanzas, and never in couplets. then put the artist photo and name in the right margin, maybe? and link to a page with their bio and works?