Poetry

  • May 2017

    Burning flame from a campfire
       By Tanaya Winder
    Photo: David Hepworth/Flickr i pull my brothers from words, stupid injun, shot like bullets. when people ask why my brothers hated school i say: the spirit remembers what it’s like to be lef...

  • May 2017

    Mango. Photo by Jin Choi/Flickr.
       By Craig Santos Perez
    Photo: Jin Choi/Flickr All the mangoes I’ve tastedin California were imported and lost their true flavors in transit. And, even though all the mangoes I’ve enjoyed in Hawai’i were homegrown and ripen...

  • May 2017

    Red water droplet.
       By Heid E. Erdrich
    Photo: Jake Bellucci/Flickr What holds water in a droptension that holds humans in between their sweet skins water holds usher arms baystide of bloodbeat so close  just our skins  betweenhome and oce...

  • May 2017

    A lake reflecting moonlight at night
       By Sherwin Bitsui
    Photo: WerbeFabrik/Pixabay A bottom-lit sea ponders the lake’s questions,their secret conversations thatch howls to whimpers exhaled from an isthmus of drowned wolves.  Its glossary’s cataclysms smoo...

  • May 2017

    Female silhouette, outside in mountain pose.
       By Shauna Osborn
    Photo: Mark Brodie/Pixabay between landscape and the female body:earth   sand   stones   plants   flowers   blood a silhouette  digging molding carving space  visible & tactile  between the body...

  • May 2017

    Lake Thunderbird in Oklahoma
       By Chip Livingston
    Photo: Granger Meador/Flickr Our stuck tongues screamed louder In Alabama, words hung in a rhythm  Reservation hands could basket Tied back rocks rose, picked  Tarnished cigarettes unsupervised Betwe...

  • May 2017

    Marwin Begaye (Diné), Riders of the Storm II, lithograph, 15 x 22 in / Courtesy of the artist (@m.begaye2015)
       By Sy Hoahwah
    Marwin Begaye (Diné), Riders of the Storm II, lithograph, 15 x 22 in / Courtesy of the artist (@m.begaye2015) That day my guardian angel was cast out,she responded, “Fine, your heaven is too bougie,a...

  • May 2017

    Sunrise with pinpoint of light through a tree
       By Elise Paschen
    Photo: HeinerTenz/Pixabay Daybreak After the watch, dorveille,pin-prick of stud in sky,before that six a.m.first warbler wake-up callfrom elm above the deck,in dream a wife no longeranswers...

  • May 2017

    Kim Shuck, Warrior Trout (2016), 15/0 glass seed beads on brain-tanned hide, 9 x 2.5 in / Courtesy of the artist and Doug Salin Photography
       By Kim Shuck
    Kim Shuck, Warrior Trout (2016), 15/0 glass seed beads on brain-tanned hide, 9 x 2.5 in / Courtesy of the artist and Doug Salin Photography Memory spirits give me days full of Words I’ve forgotten or...

  • May 2017

    Refugio Beach. Photo by David Cantu.
       By Casandra Lopez
    Photo: David Cantu/Flickr Brother piles sand on his pregnant girlfriend’s belly. On her sandy stomach I draw a belly button. Soon it will be dusk  and the last surfers in the distance will disappear ...

  • May 2017

    Red and orange autumn leaves.
       By Tacey M. Atsitty
    Photo: Dan Zen/Flickr I think they know – about every leaf I’d catch to peel from my tongue. It spoke to how good I was at being alone. This morning I sit in the still kitchen, rued by autumn passing...

  • May 2017

    Orca diving out of the water
       By Laura Da’
    Photo: Mike Charest/Flickr That slick envelope of developed film is tumbled in a storage closet next to old seating charts and a stale granola bar in foil. In one of the frames, faces are locked in a...

  • May 2017

    Photo: George Moga
       By Dan Taulapapa McMullin
    Photo: George Moga No. Nothing. Nothing on a really tall chair; a chair with very long legs; up to the sky, which was empty.   And down fell fragrance; fragrance of flowers, although there were no fl...

  • May 2017

    December 5th 2016 / No Spiritual Surrender by Zoë Marieh Urness (zoeurnessphoto.com), taken at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota
       By Trevino L. Brings Plenty
    December 5th 2016 / No Spiritual Surrender by Zoë Marieh Urness (zoeurnessphoto.com), taken at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota there are persons who delight in human suffe...

  • May 2017

    Vets Stream into Standing Rock. Photo: Joe Brusky/Flickr
       By Karenne Wood
    “Vets Stream into Standing Rock.” Photo: Joe Brusky/Flickr for Zhooniyah Ogitchida, with gratitude He walked to the frontline in his Army combat shirt.On it, his sergeant badge, name tape, U...

  • May 2017

    Anila Quayyum Agha, Alahambra Nights(2016), acrylic and halogen bulb, 30” x 27” x 30” / Courtesy of the artist
       By Shadab Zeest Hashmi
    Anila Quayyum Agha, Alahambra Nights (2016), acrylic and halogen bulb, 30” x 27” x 30” / Courtesy of the artist Qasida of the Bridge of Teacups The soul cleaves into two somewhere along the...

  • May 2017

    Flowers
       By Gili Haimovich
     Photo: Tanya Hart   Go Thee And the way you gathered up your excess soulbefore it spilled to the floor.At the end of the Hebrew-Yiddish-English poetry readingand you went to eat shawarma. T...

  • March 2017

    Photo: Andreas Manessinger
       By Ghassan Zaqtan
    Photo: Andreas Manessinger/Flickr Old friend, when we meet, we will meetas two shelves of wings and many harsh years, as one imagination that won’t exchange toasts:there’s no one to stomp the grapes...

  • March 2017

    Umbrellas and leaves
       By Kiriu Minashita
    Photo: Susanna Hsing Rhythm Lucretius’s atomic rain falls graduallyabove daily congestion, wetting my earlobes with noise.I’ve swallowed the good parts of several dropssleepy dissonance. On one side,...

  • March 2017

    Gaza City. Photo: Getty / AFP photo / Mahmud Hams
       By Rachel Tzvia Back
    Gaza City. Photo: Getty / AFP photo / Mahmud Hams   History moves darkly and we are small, soft things.                                                                          –...

  • January 2017

    Photo: Claude Valette
       By Hagit Grossman
    Photo: Claude Valette    Evolution I was once a Paleolithic painter, a sensual hunterplundering the earth, living from hand to mouth.I painted at the cave’s corner, concerned only w...

  • January 2017

    a tram in Hungary creates a streak of blue lights at night
       By Gábor Schein
    Photo by Zsolt Andrasi/Flickr Glints of the tram. The nondescript housesdream numb underwater dreams. Faces aretransparent bubbles popping off from the windowswhere water used to break through. The p...

  • January 2017

    Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge.
       By Carolyn Forché
    Photo by Todd Slagter/Flickr   A Bridge Behind us a sea-cliff, landfall, ahead the wind,tar-smoke, the sea, a carrick.We sway on a bridge between themabove a great shattering. We have leftthe verge,...

  • November 2016

    Swirl
       By Zeina Hashem Beck
    Photo: US Army IMCOM Body For Hassan Rabeh, young dancer displaced from Syria, who killed himself by jumping from a seventh-floor balcony in Beirut, Wednesday, June 22, 2016 & perhaps yo...

  • November 2016

    Green train passing platform outside
       By Lidija Dimkovska
    Photo: Train Photos/Flickr A Swap  At the market bus stopI’m waiting with a man in ragged clothes,unshaven, his hair greasy,swinging his hand holding a big plastic bagwith “The Big Shopper” written o...
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