rick barot‘s second volume of poems, Want, will be published by Sarabande Books this spring. He teaches at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. christian barter‘s first collection of poetry, The Singers I Prefer (CavanKerry) was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize. His…
Scawmy, gray-souled November blinds the whale-road, pall draper over this ship bearing one whose name means of the ocean in a language he denied allegiance to, though his lines rang with cynghanedd—English reined by Celtic music, stitched tight as the coracle that wombed Taliesin—tribal rain-downs of sound, not enough: a small people lose their tongue…
The New Choice Pregnancy Testing Kits are hung along the ramp-up to the register. The woman ahead of me would pass hers with flying colors. She’s huge and sighing, the kids in her cart keep eying my candy. I recognize the cashier—she’s the girl who used to work at the Video Cave that closed. We…
I was twenty-two, pretty maybe. It was a small town county fair: hot dogs, freak show, cotton candy, and heavy wheels laden with light, all tuned to the gaudy air. The Octopus—remember that one? Eight arms like extended girders, the thing was a metal Shiva juggling worlds: a cup spun at the end of each…
That there is no it, only is. —Richard Ford Two days ago, the sun Was a white stone in the leaden sky, The black-eyed Susans looked up And fell back wilted, just as I wilted And retreated to the air conditioner. Today a breeze has flowed from the northwest, It’s 28 degrees cooler, And I…
Red houses, white houses, drawing our curtains against the spectacle of each other washing dishes and trimming the dog’s nails. Now and then we exchange news. Life’s gotten harder, easier, nobody this week has tied a noose in the master bedroom, or watched his bed flame on the lawn. Nobody in a black auto pulls…
As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys to wheel them from the university halls, who could have predicted the startled chirping in those pockets, the invisible bells and tiny metal music of the phones, in each the cheer of a voiceless song. Pop mostly, Timberlake, Shakira, tunes never more various now, more young, shibboleths…
She’s already fallen twice, first breaking the left hip when she misses a step at the beauty parlor, then her right in a tumble at her old house in Arizona. It’s in this precarious condition that my mother comes back into my life. When her second husband dies, it falls on me, as her only…
The twist of the stream was inscrutable. It was a seemingly run-of-the-mill stream that flowed for several miles by the side of Route 302 in northern Vermont— and presumably does still—but I’ve not been back there for what seems like a long time. I have it in my mind’s eye, the way one crested a…
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