May Contributors
Alice Blackwell, Madeline Blair, Wayne F. Burke, Jonathan Butcher, Craig Constantine, Liz DeGregorio, Loel Earl, Makayla Edwards, Vern Fein, Sean Foster, Crystal James, Frank Haberle, Scott C. Holstad, Damon Hubbs, Jade Kleiner, Andy Huy Le, Shon Mapp, Liz Mariani, Pawel Markiewicz, Tempest Miller, Nathaniel Nicolau, Bill Neumire, Joe Pagano, Jr., dan raphael, Piper Rasmussen, John Repp, Fran Schumer, Philip Venzke, E.G. Ware, and Hannah Webster
Poetry
May Highlights
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swan story: ode to ambiguous pronouns
by John Repp
“…the delis & bookshops, / the cobblers & lectures & resettlement houses jostling / each block, all the free things penniless couples could do, / how they hid their Robeson records till McCarthy / was good and dead.”
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domestic sentences 11
by Bill Neumire
“[Jesse] just got a senior lecturer position at Cornell and he gets to teach a class on happiness, which is a secular replacement for god.
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it was a war, wasn't it?
by Crystal James
“Today, I celebrate my inner child / Her strength and resilience / Her messy hair and shy voice / Her dirty feet and fearless climb / Her vigilance / Her hope / Her love for red poppies in August”
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puppet man
by Frank Haberle
“Come, children, the man standing on a box / In the center of the bridge yelled to us, / In Shakespeare. Let us shut up this box / And put away these puppets, for our play / Has been played.”
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narcissus, repenting
by Hanna Webster
“I lick her palm, which tastes like mercy, her grooved heartline ensnared by the pathetic molecular boundary of her flesh. What a shame. I smell fear radiate from her hair like steam”
postpartum
by Jesse Darnay
“Our newborn sounds / a fracture, / chipping my summer.”
grifted
by John Jeffire
“She regifted all, a painless sloughing of skin.”
through the cubes
by Grady VanWise
“You blink and now she's dressed in shadow, / a shroud of midnight, / with flickers of neon red pulsing underneath, / veins of pure electricity…”
five poems
by Craig Kirchner
“Insomnia and I decide to get up / and check out some late-night TV. / It’s a mutual decision, but he gets credit for the idea. / I’m going to have a coffee, hazelnut, /and he’s down with the 12-year-old bourbon, neat.”
two poems
by Ingrid Marie Jensen
“…bright horses, bolting in from the blue / and I know that’s borderline / affirmations written on the mirror in lipstick…”
five sonnets
by Rodrigo Toscano
“Ok, why not, bring on the asteroid / Gotta start—or end, somewhere.”
two poems
by Nick Power
“We are precious, / our dreams are precious, / we’ll dream them together, as the dream / of each other. ”
five poems
by Jones Irwin
“Muerte la inteligensia! Viva la muerte! at Salamanca / Deep song of the duende”
feral
by Emma Wells
“Here, stillness reigns. / Irritation stops.”
three poems
by Steven M. Smith
“They had to accelerate after work . . . away / from their frowning houses, where their spouses / perspired and sighed into pots of soup and laundry bins.”
three poems
by henry 7. reneau, jr.
“a euphor/oxia of osmotic diss- / combobulation it can happen / now !! to you / is only amerikkka as usual (hear no/ speak no / see no evil) / a racial diss- / equilibrium of gunshot / splayed”
two poems
by Sharon Weightman Hoffman
“like many people, I have hated mimes / with their white faces and quizzical eyebrows, / leaning into the wind or trapped / in invisible boxes.”
two poems
by Sumayya Arshed
“the car hums like a throat clearing before confession, / fear sits beside her, always by her side, / palpable as sweat sinking into vinyl seats…”
two poems
by Len Kuntz
“…when it hugs you pats your back says Son you’re a tall bastard now that laugh again his new set of eyes nearly as black as the ants that danced throughout our home the ones that still come looking.”
four poems
by a.d.
“Having sated his calling, the prostitute / returns under the first blush / of dawn, & in the vestry smothers / his hard-earned holiness.”
five poems
by Clay Waters
“How do we do it / messing up our very first garden, / embarrassments / buried in squared-off corners, / forebears crucified on palm frond, / thorny warnings…”
two poems
by Mykyta Ryzhykh
“When I buried you the oceans didn't move however / When I buried you it didn't rain and nothing changed / When I buried you I realized that you still hear and even breathe”
pascal’s death
by Nick Power
“Pascal’s death was a cliffhanger / merciful and swift like the maintenance train / the Kinsellas got him – / one in the ear one in the eye, like Morningstar / he lay there outside The Blood Tub / beneath flashing Bass / a contented Sealion…”
five poems
by Robert Sheppard
“…nature’s resonating chamber / perfectly formed and moulding pure / breath / into a song that will never die – / honed by judgement / of restraint / and extension, phrasing / speech into song / Stardust!”
three poems
by Mark McConville
“The glow / The gleam / The light that cuts through the darkness…”