Postmark from the Transition
By Rachel M. Simonthe name altered from parent's choosing
the threshold of a home
white gloves on the windowsill
Search Results
How to write a poem, according to Souha Bechara
By Zein El-AmineSit in their circle.
Don't let your eyes linger
on any object in the room.
Split
By Cathy Linh CheI see my mother at thirteen
in a village so small,
it's never given a name.
Uncivil
By Venus ThrashI am wearing a white tux with tails,
or a baby blue one with a ruffly shirt,
or decked out in classic black, or coolly
Laundry
By Alicia OstrikerJust finished folding laundry. There's the news. A slender prisoner, ankles shackled, nude back and legs striped by a brown substance you might take for blood but which probably is feces, hair long, arms extended at shoulder level like a dancer or like Jesus, walks toward a soldier with rolled-up pants and a gun, posed legs akimbo in the tiled corridor. I cannot say from the image if the soldier is smiling, too few pixels to tell.
IUDs
By Kim RobertsWheels, whisks, wishbones,
silhouette of a tiny pine.
Birds in flight and fiddlehead ferns.
Illegal Borders
By Sonja de Vriesa scar starting below his
cheekbone ran down the length
of his face like a road map
Build You Up
By Alison Roh ParkIf it were not so scarred from your accidental
rages—uptown, upstate—I would have rested
on the cinder block of your chest.
18
By Lauren K. AlleyneHere is the night snarled with stars, here is the smile
full of teeth. Here is the bloom of desire, its scent swift
entering everything. Here are the arms, the legs, the heady
Maine
By Carly SachsWhere does memory go?
Our windows looking out on the bay,
my wet clothes hanging on the antlers