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Crime & Punishment

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  • Poem

    poetry-magazineRobben Island

    By Pamela Sneed
    The only antidote I may have to Trump’s election
    is in a small ferry to Robben Island
    one that shuttles…
  • Poem

    poetry-magazineBone Symphony

    By Michelle Phương Hồ





    On my windowsill, there are insects whose skeletal remains
    remain intact. Fruit flies or gnats…
  • Poem

    Pencil Letter

    By Irina Ratushinskaya
    I know it won't be received
    Or sent. The page will be
    In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.
    Later. …
  • Audio

    Mass

    By Othuke Umukoro
  • Poem

    poetry-magazineMass

    By Othuke Umukoro
    What was I thinking about
    on my way here? passing
    the small kenkey with rabbit stew joint, passing
    Elmina…
  • Poem

    Social Skills Training

    By Solmaz Sharif
    Studies suggest How may I help you officer? is the single most disarming thing to say and not What's…
  • Poem

    poetry-magazineLYNCH

    By Nicolás Guillén
    Translated By Aaron Coleman
    Lynch from Alabama.
    Tailpiece in the form of a whip
    and three-pointed hooves.
    Tends to appear
    with a great…
  • Poem

    poetry-magazineA Coin Is a Map to a Beheading

    By Elizabeth Willis
    The vulnerability of the figurehead is at the center of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting of Charles I:…
  • Poem

    poetry-magazineLYNCH

    By Nicolás Guillén
    Lynch de Alabama.
    Rabo en forma de látigo
    y pezuñas terciarias.
    Suele manifestarse
    con una gran cruz…
  • Poem

    poetry-magazinePOLICÍA

    By Nicolás Guillén
    Este animal se llama policía.
    Plantígrado soplador.
    Variedades: la inglesa, sherlock. (Pipa).
    Carter, la…
  • Poem

    poetry-magazinePOLICE

    By Nicolás Guillén
    Translated By Aaron Coleman
    This animal calls itself police.
    Whistling plantigrade.
    Varieties: the English, Sherlock. (Pipe.)
    Carter…
  • Poem

    Clive Song

    By Anne Carson
    If I were an early person
    I'd look for the limits of human wisdom
    by going to sacred oak trees
    or the local…
  • Poem

    The Part About Fate or Counterpoint

    By Sylvia Chan
    I want to begin this poem with two stories:
    1. In 1984, my mother was pulled over for speeding in a rural, still unnamed village in Taishan. The cop was a forty-year-old man who let her go because of her age...
  • Poem

    The Bug Wrangler

    By Mike Doughty
    He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn’t answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Roll Call

    By Erik Tschekunow
    Six times every day we stand at the thresholds
    of our cells to be counted, to be matched against
    the roster of mugs the guards clutch and riffle
    like assembly instructions as they tramp the ranges,
    always in twos, keys piggy-bank chanking,
    at night waggling...
  • Poem

    Meditation on Statistical Method

    By J. V. Cunningham
    Plato, despair!
    We prove by norms
    How numbers bear
    Empiric forms,

    How random wrong
    Will average right
    If time be long
    And error slight,

    But in our hearts
    Hyperbole
    Curves and departs
    To infinity.

    Error is boundless.
    Nor hope nor doubt,
    Though both be groundless,
    Will average out.
  • Poem

    Into the Weeds

    By Kevin Prufer
    The brutality of those two men
                                                     who broke into her apartment
    and murdered her boyfriend,
           ...
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