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How to Clean an Empty Nest

Poetry Tyrel Kessinger Misc. Yell a command to the house. Anything. Issue orders for a jacket to be put away, a trombone to be practiced (or mercifully stopped), video game controllers to be put down...

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Three Poems

Poetry Edward Lee This for A Into your loneliness we place our voices, hoping our words might comfort your wounded heart. We do not mean to remind you of all you have lost by extolling the manifold...

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Cleaning the Coffeepot

Poetry Barry Peters The nuns require weekly chores: attendance taker, flag raiser, eraser clapper. The one I fear is coffeepot cleaner. The solitary confines of the faculty room. The mysterious aromas...

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For Sale

Poetry Kenneth Pobo I can’t decide whether to buy the red pair of gloves or the black. A high school girl runs a kiosk behind me. A shopper comes up and says he wants to buy me— I’d look good …...

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Two Poems

Poetry Tim Suermondt The City Will Do Best to go in later in the morning, midweek, riding the subway to the stop that has you come out between the library and the church— life and the afterlife staring...

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Sunday

Poetry Les Wicks A silent gift though you seem unaware like an earring dropped the mercy of care, this unexpected drug. We have each other clothed only in buttered afternoon light. It is understood we...

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Four Poems

Poetry Garrett Harriman The Spider Poem Remembered It had short lines throughout, only two or three stanzas plus that extra bit at the end.* The spider was a pilot then Quetzalcoatl and the flies in...

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Two Poems

Poetry Erren Kelly Esther doesn’t have to save her people from death and tyranny anymore she just serves them coffee in a little coffeehouse in Brookline her heart no longer makes King Xerxes go cuckoo...

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Old Poet

Poetry Timothy Pilgrim I find it in The New Yorker now easier to yawn about nothing poems— self-obsessed men, depression, sanity on the run, priests preying on nuns. Phallic prayer naked, life, spread...

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Four Poems

Poetry Melissa Evans What is Poetry Anyway? I stood in the doorway At 6 am and saw you. It was the sound that woke me; The crash… There you were in kitchen, Holding the pieces of a small teacup,...

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Three Poems

Poetry Diane Webster Log and Fire Log expands grains so fire breathes through veins emblazoned with gold aliveness, molten glass blobbing before form-fitting mold cools exterior like ash fragment...

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Five Poems

Poetry Chris Abbate Before You Were Here For Beth Dad points out the unicorn in the empty lot along Jordan Lane. He does this every Saturday night on the way to my grandparents’ house. Everyone...

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Five Poems

Poetry Richard Dinges, Jr. Loss What can you know of a woman who mourns a tooth pulled to decay, her mind already in slow dissolve, her diaries read in absentia spread into tight spidery webs, words...

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Three Poems

Poetry Marchell Dyon Black Women Sing Too Of Cages We too howl against the rattle of time We too rage our tattered wings against the bars We see the length of years stretch before you We see the gray...

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Vagina Bowl Making Workshop

Poetry Salvatore Marici Vagina Bowl Making Workshop Photos of Tigerlily’s vagina guide women’s fingers press, curve beige clay, cast intentions to the earth cuddle in their hands. Bear babies if they...

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Three poems

Poetry Tiffany Washington Confession Last Easter, wedged between my brother (alcoholic) and my mother-in-law (tyrant) my grandmother decided to tell us a story— to seek redemption in the retelling...

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complexity on my way home

Baker’s Pick Johann van der Walt wait a minute if you speak only to hear your own voice you waste time you told me this back when we shared fluids you said that we are endless seconds that end up …...

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Four Poems

Poetry Mark Hammerschick In Arizona Distance Long by Wide Moon rocks beckon in an Arizona distance deep with desert long by width wide with height. Heat Sand Snakes Saguaro Lizards leap in tangled...

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Five Poems

Poetry DS Maolalai My Grandfather heavy the tread like a box with flowerpots. his fingers dust brown and warm soda bread. a man is a knuckle. made hard with antique. with simple food, with hot tea,...

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Last Thursday Night

Poetry Madeleine Claire Last Thursday Night Do you remember what you told me last Thursday night? Rain battered the paint off our old pickup truck as you drove on, reminding us of another job that...

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