From the magazine:Jenny Holzer—DYING SHOULD BE AS EASY AS FALLING OFF A LOG (1978)
By Rochelle Hurt
[as jumping from a plane. easier—a bridge. as tripping on a shoelace. as blinking your eyes. as breathing…
Explore Poems: Ekphrasis
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From the magazine:Carolee Schneemann—Interior Scroll (1975)
By Rochelle Hurt[all my exes agree i’m too sensitive. inside i’m keeping track of slights on one long receipt, a diaristic…From the magazine:Bharti Kher—Confess (2010)
By Rochelle Hurt[if you marry your confession, you can live alone inside it. no priest behind the window. no wife or…From the magazine:
Mango Head
By Shara McCallumWhy yu always ask stupid question, ee?
The man call mango head because him head
shape like mango. What…- By Ama CodjoeWhat if, Betye, instead of a rifle or hand
grenade—I mean, what if after
the loaded gun that takes two hands
to fire, I lay down the splintered broom
and the steel so cold it wets
my cheek? What if I unclench the valleys
of my... From the magazine:Pentimento
By Mag GabbertThe effect—for those three hundred years, while the cupid remained hidden—was a kind of silence.
Like…From the magazine:
Everyday around the world a woman is pulled into blue
By Krista FranklinEveryday some brown
woman pools into inky blue,
a madness that crawls up
from the floor of her and flows
out all around. I should
know, for months swallowed
in the bruise of myself
reaching to hold my hand.
The sun continues to brush
orange light intermittently
everywhere despite the...From the magazine:
Untitled (Blues)
By Krista FranklinIndigo pool, color of the wings
of the biggest specimen captured
in glass in my second room, that one
iridescent, incandescent, a word
I wish every nigga knew. Not too far
back, my shadow embraced me so long
I thought I was Narcissus, pulled
deep into my...From the magazine:
The Future Is Black as a Pocket
By Krista FranklinThe handwriting is on the wall
a white smear across the face of the sky
a smear of white
a white chalk smear on a blackboard sky
an inky bleed that eats everything.
Come clean. In the dark
we all look alike,
right? Wing of a bald...From the magazine:
My Enemy. My Love.
By Ruth Ellen KocherWe end easy. Your hand always your hand,
not mine. Your hand before and behind me,
vertigo cinching the quiver in my teeth,
canine as well as wisdom in repose,
my jaw gut-locked beyond silence.
Silence, O Love, this sound without sound,
this air pickled in...From the magazine:
Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces
By Abdulkareem AbdulkareemAll things begin from the spindle,
we say—life spun from graces.
I grew like rain from rumbles of my parents’
cloud, a dark dawn, admitting growth.
In the beginning, I squeeze into existence with a head,
white, silhouette-like—formed from
the stomach of the hard earth on...- By S.J. Fowler & Rebecca KamenSIR, the 28 spheres of Kamen’s harmony
Susceptible, inferred, immense, actual - the electron microscopy provides images of the virus long in memories.
It shows grey spinning, transforming this (I point to the past fifteen months) into orbs.
Here they are, grown enormous, before you in place, not within you in space. For what else can it become but the potential for indifferent attractiveness.
A memory, this spread; a novel micrography.
The SIR diagram is a mirror that creates a migratory pattern in the mind, as one would imagine birds flying, out of sight.
Of birds then. The diagram is a symbol that brings nets down, and what gets trapped in nets, as it is expelled from our hands, and rid by water, is a thing, that reflects, traces, and symbolizes.
Both the virus, and us.
The universe participates in making the artist well, and an instigator.
The participation of the invisible moves the virus into view.
A speck, a spread, a tiny writing in the air, a diagram, an avian metaphor, an object installed to illuminate. All of this, completely noiseless.
And this is why I write to you, in order to not speak the word, and have it just be seen. From the magazine:
Madonna of the Chair
By Mary Jo BangYou once sat on straw mats but clearly
it wasn’t enough.
It must not have been
since you lifted the mat a few inches
and added pegs at the corners.
You knew how legs worked,
you used them to look for your food.
Was the elevation meant...From the magazine:
The Gospel of Mary
By Mary Jo BangI was living a life that was more
or less filled with misfiring synapses
inside a braincase. They said and said
and never stopped saying, “You are
that problem that can’t be undone,
a daughter that keeps becoming
what keeps her mother awake.” I was
in that...From the magazine:
Science Says
By Mary Jo BangThat the walls have no texture suggests that we,
the angels and I, are perfect. And we are,
the way children are until they are no longer.
I remember seeing ground and wondering
where walking might take me. Up or down?
In a landscape of...From the magazine:
Today
By Victoria ChangJan.4.2022
A call is just a call. I pick it up.
Jan.6.2022
I lift blankets looking for my father.
Jan.7.2022
When I take off the patch, your eye is gone.
I spend the day in other people’s tears.
Jan.9.2022
Someone says your eyelid almost came off,
the doctors tried...- By Anne SextonThe town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
It moves. They are all... From the magazine:
Vertigo
By Elena Karina ByrneBut all dark notes are dismantled
there from the middle ear
downward. Voyaged mind, cauldron skin.
Can you claim anything is yours?
The burning salt hour
throws its black broken-glass frame skyward.
Left behind
the mum orchestra, body parts in peril
and animals dizzy for
lust past all lost
astronomy...From the magazine:
Panic at John Baldessari’s Kiss
By Elena Karina ByrneThe aftermath always happening like an airplane falling, or a man
midair falling from a horse, and an arrow, a gun, many guns
pointing away, at us, our all bull’s-eye-on-the-mark. This is what he
sees when he sees. Maybe Wrong or not, the...