after Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) I met a hapless man a literary critic —but I’m not only that I’m a poet myself— he said we are fond of you your poems are charming but don’t ask us to read them we cannot there are certain poems we simply cannot tolerate the…
Does it surprise you to learn that I once had a wife? Someone to whom I showed my wounds, who made me dangerous because, at unstrung moments with her, I was so happy? It’s not something I talk easily about. She vowed to help me get my fate straight, a task obviously not within her…
A coyote runs across the dirt road and into the woods. Light gray fur, all haunches and tail. Nuisance. I have seen her running once before like an animal released, breath of everything filling her lungs. Desire or flight? I could not tell from my car, the windshield covered in dust and pollen—feeling grizzled myself,…
In poetry, our winner is Aurielle Marie for her poem “a psalm in which i demand a new name for my kindred.” Of her poem, poetry judge Fatimah Asghar said, “The language in this poem is incredibly unique—every line is a slight twist, a turn, a surprise at the end of the breath. The language…
Same one we’d keptin the garage or in the toolshedmy whole life, same loose handle, same tarnishedblade. I’d seen my father sharpen it on the bench grinder,sparks flying, to cut through roots or hardenedsoil. Same one I’d used to replant our overgrowngeraniums one spring, from the front of the houseto the back lot. Now, I’m…
Ignore that I am invisible to you,a man old enough to call a girl a girl when I see one. Ignore how I am held up by a half-Windsorslouched under teeth yellow as a work day is endless. Ignore the depth of my voice and listen. It’s not the van.Or the bumper. Or the rubber…
Not my daughter and me saying once, and once again, to remember we need tofu. But more me saying, please call if you’re going to be really late. And then we’re way past re-, and eyerolls won’t undo it, and compulsion won’t let the mind rev any way but. There’s a moth—the greater wax moth—that…
There was a time when, sitting in a parking lot, I could make the parked car in front of me dematerialize. Could drive straight through it, if I wanted to. That was an unwashed time, birdcalls trapped in drawers, matching sets of months when a face could never move a face again. Dematerializing the parked…
She never set foot in that house, wason the other side of the world, livingher life as if every day were Sunday, thoughgiven her location this was noblessing, just another day ofshortages, of thuds in the distance that madeone’s mind leap even when one’sbody was in bed. One day bledinto another, the ash of intention…
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