Five
by Eleni Sikelianos

If you were a child / standing on the grass holding an ice cube in your hand / and your hand was warm, was warming / or if you were the earth holding an iceberg in your belly / the bathing veins feeding the heart ...
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Concrete
by Alicia Byrne Keane

​So you take some symbol, like / the overcoat       the pockets / an obscure tangle of thread & air / so any weight dropped there went right / to the lining ...
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Three
by Eric Pankey

The canyon walls’ striations / Wrought by water, by wind, / Reveal deviations / In the parallel of lines. / : : / How to integrate the minutiae— / The febrile marks, a torn web ...
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Picking    Blueberries
by Rosanna Oh

It was a risk my father had taken in midwinter: / ordering 240 pint boxes of blueberries / in less than desirable condition at a discount / so they could be repicked, repacked, and resold ...
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Two
by Rebecca Macijeski

When he was born, he could already play. / Music, like time and space, was in his blood. / He only had to wait for his body to catch up / to what was flowing inside. / It happened like this ...
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Three
by Daniel Nemo

Lately I see things / fade to a dark shade / till they wear through / their own orbit. / What strikes my eye / is an altercation of fluency. / Part concomitance / of form. Part vacuum / that sucks me in ...
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Nausea
by Elizabeth Loudon

Even when I fainted on the dockside / I wanted to do it with grace – / a limp swan folding its wings among reeds. / I remembered my kin who long ago / sailed this way, all plunder and panic ...
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Four
by Jessica E. Johnson

On a hill / where someone planted you: / needles skyward / sensate iterations of self / open to a too-gray heaven ...
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Two
by Jimmy Lo

taking off my coat, / my "care of place," someone / said. I hear the roar / of a thousand-thousand places / being stripped like / the blank time in between ...

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When    the    World    at    Large    Makes    You    Feel
by Amy Gordon

afraid, as if any moment you might fall through / the thin glaze you’re skating on, you hold / your breath, as if balloons in your chest / could prevent the worst, until one day, a crack ...
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Sunrise,    Late    Winter
​by L. Ward Abel

​​About halfway past seven just as / the northeast sky lit up orange / from waters aloft / I looked right and, distracted, / thought of all those million souls / then flying in waves / towards Carolina ...
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Distichs
by Frederick Pollack

​Life is the model for a poem, even the subtlest; / for life ignores death, as a poem ignores logic. / If they say your studies are a waste of time, / tell them you’re taking a bite from it ...
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Two
​by Ken Poyner

The authorities are confiscating clocks. They debate mother’s egg timer, finally taking it. For clocks set into architecture, they take the hands, come back to etch out the faces ...
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Niels    Bohr
by Harrison Fisher

​is quoted as once saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially / about the future,” some real comedic talent in evidence here ...
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Writing    Biography
by Janet McCann

​So good to lose oneself / in someone else— / rewrite her to fit. / I see myself / on that doorstep in Austria. / Heavy wooden door. / Bronze lion knocker, or is it a griffin? ...
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Three 
​by Sean Thomas Dougherty

​When I was about 19 years, / I recall this summer night / I put this Etta James cassette / on my Sony Walkman / & took a bottle of wine / I stole underage from the packy store ...
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Two
​​​by Iain Britton

sometimes i feel stuck in the foreplay of a warm vaporous dream / * / i’m fascinated by this detachment of being – not being / i crave for new sounds – for intakes of fresh air – for / living off the edge of a clock ...​
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As    It    Is
​by David Ruekberg

Some men have discovered the secret / of power is to simply disregard the / rules. One takes his woman securely / by the throat as if it were her job / and pays her well for it. One sweep / of his baton and the forests flame ...
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Four
by Loisa Fenichell

Come dusk, the field makes the sound / of a vanishing. I cut through, feeling / just like a waste below the pinkish clouds / that dangle without any language. / Last night, was told that language makes / the world. Tonight, the world makes the line ...
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Two
​by Lesle Lewis

What is the self but an idea of self? / Or two flutes and a harp. / Is truth better than belief? / Or electric guitars? / You’re making it up and making it real. / The tall, shiny icicles become moons or medicines. / One thing becomes another so easily ...​
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carnivorous    plants
by Eric Adamson​

when a victim is identified it is only in the post / mortem that confirmation can occur. mollusks, / spiders, birds all enjoy alike the sweet sugar of a / pitcher plant, completely lacking self-awareness. / the truth is ​carnivory thrives in uncertainty ...
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Conversations    with    the    Neighborhood    Girl
​by Vanessa Niu

I know what love is. / It hides under the endless growing space under my bed, / pulsing like a second, mechanical heart of mine. / It is my nature to love, although falsely, at a distance ...
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Ocean    House
by Stephano Pereira

The front door bursts open / ocean waves gush into the house / and beyond it /  the sky is a clean cerulean / touched by a diamond air ...

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On   How    to    Be    Free    in    the    World
by Jocelyn Ulevicus

I don’t want to be held back any longer—​ / I want to float / in the atmosphere with the darlings / I slaughtered, ringed with marigolds / my dark hair / ringing with blackbirds, / with stars / in my throat ...
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Excerpts    (adapted)
by Simone Weil

Decreation: to make something created pass into the uncreated. / Destruction: to make something created pass into nothingness. / A blameworthy substitute for decreation. Creation is an act of love / and it is perpetual ...
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Two
by Matthew Woodman

a sconced frieze fingering geologic time / a print exposing the empiric impulse / to impose /     / frame / into recognizable focus / an emergence of torsos and tendons / from shrouds of ash a protrusion / that dares us not to say / face ...
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Five
​by Christina Pugh

Every pin is a tender path. / Every arrow begins to sew. / The skin, not the mind, creates the soul ...


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Bird    Calendar    (Earth    List)
​by Kate Fagan

​Eastern koel / January companion / in the vertical air / Sulphur-crested cockatoo / February rises like / a burning mantle / Brown thornbill / March folds away its songs / while sap falls ...
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Three
by Kellam Ayres

Even in August, a chill. / Boxes stacked on the painted pine floor. / Sheets pulled over the wingbacks, the sofa. / The door closed after letting in the last / of the room’s good air. / Years ago I burned here ...
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Three
by Jacqueline Kolosov

In death they float, and so became known / as the “right” whales. Escalating now, their vanishing. By day / the remaining few brave ships, nets. Ahab said the eyes / define the face of man. What of a whale’s eyes? / Theirs capture the light, too ...
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Pavlov's    Dogs
by Brian Culhane

In the midst of his famed experiments / (buzzer or tuning fork, food, salivation), / the Neva one night overflowed its banks / and the basement lab filled with icy water / as Pavlov’s dogs fruitlessly sought escape / from a tide they could hear and scent ...
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Broken    Words
by Barrett Ahn

Shakes hand shakes head / long journey before words out of mouth / (use hands and eyes to convey meaning / wave around / gesture frantically / be emphatic on the tones I know) ...
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Three
by Daniel Nemo

Let us rest a little. / There is much to take in here. After a long process of disintegration, / rootedness. The life instinct exceeds bounds and gives off sparks / flashover of anti-form / before it breaks free / without recall. / To break free / will take a lifetime ...
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The    Inside    Twitch
by Robert Okaji

Of leaving: nothing ever lasts / but odd habits and those rancid / bits of love’s lonely power grid / held hostage. Having survived blasts / of rage, battered enthusiasts / patch their holes and hope to mend ...
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So    I    Am    Little
by Hasham Khalid

​And madness is like a discus / bolting and tearing the space with burgeoning circumference. / I have kept my little / And in keeping my little, found / all that is little is like me. / All that looks curious, / All that keeps waiting ...
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