Steven Seidenberg
One clings to trivialities—to one’s trifling indiscretions—not to abjure the consequential, but to confront it. Nothing so deflating as the pettiness of absence—of what one had presumed would prove the majesty of the void…
Megin Jimenez
I needed secrets as a child. I endowed plastic trinkets with totemic significance I vowed not to reveal. The loss of them would be disastrous.
Megin Jimenez
They will total
the money I’ve spent
digital receipts
money I’ve wasted
money over time
as the sum of my life
Melanie Figg
Her younger self was at the wheel. Way before
the turnoff she knows something is not right.
No houses in peripheral vision, the road like a movie reel, unraveling.
Andrea Abi-Karam
PART I
ribs pop off/out
fast
NOT like prison
bars raising more like
that fast flash of
blue light when a
fuse blew @ LGA
Alan Chazaro
The process in which a cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapses to form a new star. This can only happen in a gaseous nebulae but who really knows WTF a gaseous nebulae is? In middle school, I’d wanted a Terrell Owens 49ers jersey.
Erin Slaughter
I wish I was the grieved body of a hare
body that sweetbox of dirt I do not believe in
I would like to be memorialized as sheets of topaz
melting in the weeds in front of you
Renée Ashley
The gate to sleep does not fly open but the fence around it falls away and you have never dreamed like this before. A year from your life dropped like a page from a sheaf.
Renée Ashley
[So you try to remake a life] after what you’ve been told:
Not one word signified. A word is a sound is a sign
denoting nothing. Would you want more of that same?
You’d say lonely if it had meaning. You’d say done.
Larry D. Thacker
Can I shoot a round
into the sky high enough
for it to fall
back to earth and burn
Larry D. Thacker
Do they feel you hinting around
as they gather up for photos.
At the wedding reception.
The family reunion. After cleaning
the graves on Memorial Day.
Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou
Translated by Siavash Saadlou
I am the last seeping of the rain,
hanging from a dried leave,
from the bare woman of the tree,
rolling on the floor.
Zachary Schomburg
Like a wild swan with a blue shadow, I know not where I’ve swum. I bow down my head deep in the dark ripple. I honk there deep into the darkness.
Zachary Schomburg
I was busy eating a butterscotch candy next to my pony when my tote bag was found. “Your tote bag!” shouted someone named Land of the Free. “I found it.”
Zachary Schomburg
My father was on top of my brother, his knees on my brother’s arms. He looked like a toppling house on top of another house just starting to topple.
Karla Marrufo
Translated by Allison A. deFreese
we arrived at midday,
with our luggage in hand
the sun a cement square
stretching out beneath our feet,
the sky a sharp blow to the face—
Amy Forstadt
The day before Christmas I take my son/ to the planetarium. “It’ll be fun,” I say./ Really, I want to escape/ my new in-laws, their holiday
Bijan Najdi
Translated by Parisa Saranj
Half the rocks, cliffs and the mountains/ with their canyons and cups of milk/ I leave to my son. For the other half, / make a donation to a charity/ in the name of rain.
Carl-Christian Elze
Translated by Caroline Wilcox Reul
pull the key from/
the switch just/
after ignition/
the key to your/
mind and travel on without/
Talal Alyan
in us always the monorail circling a dark skyline,/an old synth/ rings in rings in rings aloud more/
siren than song in each and in us all the quiet/hours too/ letting the elevator lift us with strangers/ to apartments we will never share.
Talal Alyan
the miracle is there are/ none. sixty feet and rising/ over a Dakota that has/ gone to bed, she likes to tell/ herself the miracle is
Kathleen Hellen
in lesser light
in pews in back
I sit outside
Stella Díaz Varín
Translated by Rebecca Levi
Ah, winter inverts into noon!
Almost— as if from primal waters.
Onslaught of clover,
four leaves bent to the wind,
Stella Díaz Varín
Translated by Rebecca Levi
I command soldiers.
And I’ve told them about the danger
of hiding weapons
in the bags under their eyes.
They don’t agree.
And since they spend all their time arguing,
the battle’s already lost.
Thomas Griffin
That this could perpetuate
anything matters least to
what follows
all out there
each act, moving
toward misery or perfection
Jared Pearce
Just when it’s getting good, the rain
stops: barely slicking the road,
hardly cooling the concrete.
Nadija Rebronja
Translated by Ivana Maksić
he was having his dinner.
three poached eggs and some salad.
she was having a shower.
he sank, completely.
she watched him sinking
Nadija Rebronja
Translated by Ivana Maksić
they were walking
towards one another
across the long wall
two men
or perhaps two women
the wall was
Mia Ayumi Malhotra
X days
I’ve come unmoored from the hours. I crawl into pockets of time where there is none, lose a string of days without noticing. The weeks disappear like a dropped stitch.
Elizabeth Spires
i.
i left the capital hurrying away i carried nothing
a dark night before me a dark dark night
but when morning came i stood free & alone
casting a seven-league shadow west