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Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben & Aunt Jemima
By Frank X. Walker
...walk into a bar in America.
Butterworth says, I’m being repackaged.
Ben says, I’m being rebranded.
Jemima says, I remember
when they branded my mama on her back.

The bartender says, I could stand in the middle
of Main Street and kill somebody
and I wouldn’t...
Enter the Dragon
By John Murillo
For me, the movie starts with a black man
Leaping into an orbit of badges, tiny moons

Catching the sheen of his perfect black afro.
Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops

On their backs. It starts with the swagger,
The cool lean into the...
Intimacy
By Paisley Rekdal
How horrible it is, how horrible
that Cronenberg film where Goldblum’s trapped

with a fly inside his Material
Transformer: bits of the man emerging

gooey, many-eyed; bits of the fly
worrying that his agent’s screwed him—

I almost flinch to see the body later
that’s left its...
Bilingual Christmas
By Pat Mora
Buenos dias and hasta lue$o in boardrooms and strategy sessions, Where are your grateful holiday smiles bilinguals? I've given you a voice, let you in
to hear old friends tell old jokes,
Stop flinching, Drink eggnog, Hum alon,
Not carols we hear
whimpering
children too...
Muybridge’s Horse in Motion
By Holly Mitchell
1.
After the beginning of the gallop, there are counts when the horse is in the air, her
legs withdrawn, a diamond shape.

This is called suspension.

2.
Her name is Sallie Gardner.

She’s by Vandal, out of Charlotte Thompson, Kentucky bred, of Irish pedigree, a
Birdcatcher.

Now...
Crip vs. Crip
By Walela Nehanda
Crip (noun): slang for a disabled person/the whole of
the disabled community/
a school of thought
Example: “I’m on crip time”
Meaning: Time bends differently when the universe that is
my body dictates it

Crip (noun): a Black gang that originated in...
Who Makes Love to Us After We Die
By Diana Marie Delgado
I turn on the radio and hear voices, girls becoming women after tragedy. Talk about dreams! His heart was covered in a thin shell the color of moon and when touched, I grew old. The best movies have a philosophy...
Frankenstein Love
By Matthew Zapruder
I think there was a movie once
where Frankenstein fell in love with a vampire.
A small mummy at first interfered
but later provided the requisite necessary
clarifications. He can only
meet you at night. Her face
is scarred in a permanent expression
of doom, but her...
I WANT SKY
By Bazeed
In the hiding
hour of autophagy
ghosts hang out all day and talk to us.
An archival haunting demanding tribute:
half a lime for breakfast every day.
بشرٌ يئنّونَ من الألمِ
human voices keening in pain
تُشعلُ أجسادَهُمَ النارُ
their bodies, consumed by fire
light up the...
Autumn Testament #12
By James K. Baxter
The wish to climb a ladder to the loft
Of God dies hard in us. The angels Jacob saw

Were not himself. Bramble is what grows best
Out of this man-scarred earth, and I don’t chop it back

Till the fruit have ripened. Yesterday I...
Tiresias as Cuir (on the run)
By Trish Salah
i.

Dog. The time you take home, the time you take away from home.
The insistence, the instance worried at with your thick tongue.

Stink. Because of what you found on the ground and put in your gut.
Harry. As in beset, or beast....
From the magazine:
Breed Me
By Richie Hofmann
My sweat soaked the sheets.

You used to be like everyone else

but then

the way you hurt me (fingers, teeth):

I grew accustomed to it

then I craved it

then I got bored

and other men tried to put death into my mouth.

Angelic Richie with bite...
True Fresh
By Genevieve Arlie
The geometer wishes he were David
cut from stone by lightning, his mind

gyring wide into figures of space
out of time, ever gauging the shock

of the word for the pathos, ever
slinging the rock of his wound

at the sugared glass of me.
I'd rather...
From the magazine:
Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us
By Patti Smith
On the edge of a pasture in a confusion of stones,
obscured by the long grass and floramour,
the footprint of horror cloven and drawn.
She had a beautiful name: freedom.
Pretty little chop. Unmarketable, light
the bleating of new life.

He loved her mouth, tiny...
- Nature
- Animals
- Social Commentaries
- History & Politics
- Living
- Death
- Meters
- Free Verse
- Techniques
- Allusion
- Imagery
- Metaphor
- Grief
- + 6 more
From the magazine:
A-r-a-c-h-n-e
By Raymond Luczak
memory first what
f-a-b-r-i-c weave thread thin thick many
weave-shimmer magic
me-jaw-drop how-how-how

memory second what
people big-mouth-talk-my-face
me born deaf why
me bother deaf not

memory third what
l-o-o-m tall big
{stripe-down up-stripe-front}
look-like door magic

me want toy regular-regular play
no-no-no
w-a-r-p favorite toy
sometimes l-o-o-m weight fun too

threads slender same-same r-e-e-d-s
me-grow-up same-same
every-day...
[A dreadful darkness closes in]
By Anne Brontë
A dreadful darkness closes in
On my bewildered mind;
O let me suffer and not sin,
Be tortured yet resigned.

Through all this world...
Mythologies
By David Lehman
I.
The question is not how like the animals we are
But how we got that way. We laugh, for what is a suicide note

But the epitaph of an emotion? Few of us die out in the open;
And when you say thesis,...
Symphony No.3, in D Minor
By Jonathan Williams
I. Pan Awakes: Summer Marches In

               Pan’s
               spring rain
               “drives his victims
               out to the animals
               with whom they become
               as one”—

               pain and paeans,
               hung in the mouth,

               to be sung


               II. What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell...
All overgrown by cunning moss, (146)
By Emily Dickinson
All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of “Currer Bell”
In quiet “Haworth” laid.

This Bird – observing others
When frosts too sharp became
Retire to other latitudes –
Quietly did the same –

But differed in returning –
Since Yorkshire hills are green...
The Destruction of Sennacherib
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of...

Quick Tags

Explore Poems: Allusion

Mrs. Butterworth, Uncle Ben & Aunt Jemima

Enter the Dragon

Intimacy

Bilingual Christmas

Muybridge’s Horse in Motion

Crip vs. Crip

Who Makes Love to Us After We Die

Frankenstein Love

I WANT SKY

Autumn Testament #12

Tiresias as Cuir (on the run)

From the magazine:
Breed Me

True Fresh

From the magazine:
Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us

From the magazine:
A-r-a-c-h-n-e

[A dreadful darkness closes in]

Mythologies

Symphony No.3, in D Minor

All overgrown by cunning moss, (146)

The Destruction of Sennacherib

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:Breed Me

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:A-r-a-c-h-n-e

From the magazine:
Breed Me

From the magazine:
Worthy the Lamb Slain for Us

From the magazine:
A-r-a-c-h-n-e