Of course,   the dark thoughts come to me at dusk,   binding and unbinding like a continuum of blackbirds in the rain.… Read More “SMALL MOUND OF STONES by Peter Verbica”

Here where all the traffic meets angry the droning noise demanding my attention pounds & manners must be spun out to the rim, cursed ferocious & dodging the bites of dogs beaten frayed & closest to the phone leery betrayed & under the hood of my car overdrawn forbidden & snowed in for the winter unannounced unrewarded unremarked in my own back yard breathing & rising, breathing & falling dreaming in the time when my sleep should be & sleeping in my dreams, I am.… Read More “TOM C.’S WOMAN by Scott Hayworth”

By this time I have forgotten the smell of her linoleum, The oily organic vapors clinging near the floor That trapped the nicotine ash and tars & only partly reflected The sunbeams from the window, kept most of the yellow ones, Sent back the white & held hostage the rest.… Read More “MEMORY CARE by Scott Hayworth”

Mercè Rodoreda I Gurguí (1908-1983) was a Catalan author.… Read More “Mercè Rodoreda I Gurguí POETRY TRANSLATION by Alani Hicks-Bartlett”

i for private reasons I will take this journey much more seriously than is strictly necessary armed with a double dose of vaccine I am still convinced of a fatal weakness in my auto-immune defenses the sleek sublimity of an airplane seems like the ideal implement to penetrate my porous borders and this is the coward’s conviction that I have set a course to conquer with an eye to posterity never mind that I’m fleeing failure and shunning sadness on the way the second chance that I hope to discover may or may not be granted me and I will live in regret forever no matter how far the plane takes me ii already there is the first ill omen my driver distracted by the malfunctioning GPS but the stern rebuke I formulate mentally works like a charm to remind me there’s nothing wrong that some magical thinking can’t turn into reassurance the casual annunciation of a new bureaucratic challenge is just old fashioned security in a puzzlingly convenient form and the first refusal is hardly final even a stubborn app will change its mind given different data and the proper passport this is the benefit claimed in doubt by doubt itself to travel again as a Canadian affords me a secretly pleasing guilt as I see there are new pale flags to decode even at my right elbow while I wolf my food with atypical speed and the yearning glare of a handy soldier to meet or avoid [ctd over] I wonder who notices I’m double-masking one worn two years ago made waves and though I am slight and compact on the plane I am man-spreading arm-rests, neutral zones, are mine so I am a teenager splaying once again albeit in pain iii finally the unlikeliness of airborne flight takes pride of place and I understand that this is no banal occurrence we are risking something by our very absence from the earth’s surface population we have ascended beyond the imaginings of kings and emperors while getting a tissue from my back pocket seems to be something of a production so how far should I say we have really come?… Read More “(FREE VERSE) LETTER FROM A WARY TRAVELER by Brad Buchanan”

In my dream Leonardo DeCaprio turned into a rat after falling into a storm drain near where I slept.… Read More “I WOKE IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE, UPSTATE NY, LATE JANUARY by Svea Barrett”

Capitulation East or victory West my uterus may come to rest splayed and flattened on a surface smooth as a petri dish where dreams of conception slide into an oblivion of laws on my body or yours, under the gun for resisting the artificial implantation of a monster’s rotting seed.… Read More “CHOICE by Sarah Wyman”

Trembling, I miss another passing train At the station where napalm mornings bleed Through windowpanes, misting shadowed Crosses on my checkered path ahead.… Read More “TRANSPORTS by Samuel Armen”

the thought that thinks itself reductionist nightmare beyond looking glasses & semiotic classes curator of worlds & stars sunny days, moonlit nights orbital phase changes univocal Master of the Uni-verse   momentary vision on a mission come hither or not it’s all the same shimmering membranes of space-time portals passive footnote to shoals of phosphorescent corals artifactual realms coding variant energies into virtual synergies   overflowing abundance seeking its own substance correlation without causality lacking lineage & parentage gifting a given without giving default for the vaulted Real my own, my own surreal epiphenomenon no matter how beloved short lived or acquired my own