night falls like a brick. urgent tongue of wind stuck to the back of my neck, hair wrapped around my throat. fist of keys in my coat pocket. wraiths of […]
Read more
Category: Poetry
“Inaccessible” by Connie Woodring
I was afraid of my abusive and controlling ex-husband, but I didn’t know this until 10 years after I divorced him. I wrote hidden poems, feelings hidden. Hidden in notebooks […]
Read more
“Lava” by Cameron Morse
From my hurt back the snow-lit predawn sky is pewter, or lava, according to my best guess color chart on Pinterest. “Pewter” works, but I like lava because it feels […]
Read more
“How to Use the Supermarket When You Are Losing Your Mind” by Rebecca M Ross
When in a supermarket in a town not your own do not start screaming “Where are the olives? Where are the fucking olives?” as you race down the aisles Do […]
Read more
“Retribution” by Ash Evan Lippert
Ash Evan Lippert is a clay artist and emerging queer poet residing in the South Carolina upstate. Their poetry and fiction center on the exploration of liminal states of consciousness, […]
Read more
“I’ve Barely Been to College” by Kailey Tucker
Autumn snapped my spine like the sudden flash of a spark, waking up the dark. She brought rain and left me blooming, treading my fresh soles on top of crumbled yellow bladed leaves that change […]
Read more
“Getting Somewhere” by Cameron Morse
The more times I go back for more and find it there like a bowl of dogfood left out on the back deck by an unknown and therefore unthanked hand, […]
Read more
“A Winter Prayer for Color” by Ash Evan Lippert
Now is the time to find color where you can—in poinsettias, pine trees, fire and wine,or strings of Christmas lights hung like prayersto glow warm against the winter’s gathering dark.Now […]
Read more
“Hoops” by Stephen Kingsnorth
In vest, short shorts, quick reflex points, our up and over, chain-link fence, we traded jokes, paraded skills, especially under watch of girls, as learnt to make a better pass, […]
Read more
“The Calling” by Christina Eagen
without askingearthquakes rumbled to announce thearrival of mountains rivers roared to forewarn rocksof their ravage winds howled to demand fishermenback to shore wildfires raged to birth new lifein the forest […]
Read more
“Undisturbed” by Russell Willis
Ethicist and online education entrepreneur, Russell Willis, has been featured in THE POET Magazine Profile Series and his poetry has been published in over twenty-five online and print journals and […]
Read more
“Meditation in an Office Tower” by Dale Cottingham
Thrusting one creased pant leg in front of the other, canter-leaving ankles, knees, thighs, my leather shoes clacking slate as I amble toward and away, in one motion. Steel, sheets […]
Read more
“The Art of Remembering Your History” by Christian Ward
I do the same ritual every morning while the clouds wrap their blankets around the sunlight: Practice Italian and Spanish. Trace my fingers along paths of cheekbones inheritedfrom my mother and all the […]
Read more
“Loch Ness Monster in the Rain at Night” by David Henson
A fang of lightning crashesa branch into the wind-clawed loch. Thunder drives eels to the bottom. Water flashes downa mountain rising through the skin of the lake.The monster loves the […]
Read more
“So Many Ways to Live” by Victoria Woolf Bailey
When that moment arrives(by car, by bus, by daybreak) We live in it like a house(condo, apartment, tent down by the river) Imagining we may see it all again(later, someday, […]
Read more
“Mussel” by Christian Ward
Every shell is dipped in night. Place an ear against the ceramic to eavesdrop on fox squabbles, crows watching rubbish bags left split open like unfinished operations, brambles unfurling their […]
Read more
“Drowned Man Lives Again” by John Grey
There was a lot of crazy thrashing at first and I was cursing myself for not keeping at it with those swimming lessons, and I had unkind words for the […]
Read more
“Interrogative Sestina” by Mark J. Mitchell
Who is the bride of August? Wheredoes she send her lost birds and whatare they born to see? You? They sing. Who,precisely, are they naming? Just whenwill they return to […]
Read more
“Passing Through” by Dale Cottingham
“There is no answer” you said “to whyin an inquiry because an inquiry is to find out why,”your voice rising over us like a storm,a sample of the truth from […]
Read more
“Out of the Picture” by Lou H. Second
A painter lives in my town. A talented painterno doubt. A famous painter too. His creationshave been known to save souls and to bestowone upon those who never had any. […]
Read more
“Cherry” by Stephen Kingsnorth
Why do I keep the best till lastwhen eating cake;quite unlike wine.My mindful taste budsfind their pace, start marksfrom first eye-captured plate,declared by sharp seep under tongue,gland leak swamping salivary, […]
Read more
“An American Experience” by Dale Cottingham
While I waited at roadside I thought,why not try some loveliness. So I did.I saw visions in far reaches, feltthe soft touch of silence, melodiescame from solitude, it was like […]
Read more
“In My Space” by Anthony Ward
I look into my eyes in order to witness nebula reciprocating light from the midst of darkness residing behind them radiating with life out of the pulsating silence of consciousness […]
Read more
“Before” by Margaret Krusinga
Margaret Krusinga lives on sixty acres she and her husband manage loosely for wildlife. Diagnosed with MS in 1976, she graduated college under a cloud, in 1977. Poetry has become […]
Read more
“All my Ex-Employees are Crazy” by Joel Robert Ferguson
The polar bears are circling us, the John CageChristmas mix, the hors d’oeuvres and those bodies that servethem. adjacent, a sealkeeps practising the same underwater back-flipoff the glass we’re standing […]
Read more
“Abruptly-” by Shalini Singh
Hotaru ika are a glow-in-the-dark species, hiding in the translitic a mesmerizing light courtesy of a network of thousands of photophores, drifting long hairs of a wild woman situated over […]
Read more
“Summit Negotiations” by Stephen Kingsnorth
At the cake bazaar,annual in the village hall –Mrs Baker’s acid voice –I stall to scan those sweetmeat plates. The granulated cog biscuits,as if surfaced breeze-swept snow,fawn-mellow, flat,centre-nippled, cherry-topped;the scarlet […]
Read more
“Messages from Colorado” by Cameron Morse
Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of six collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. […]
Read more
“Rows” by Stephen Kingsnorth
A strange condition for a rowamongst the headstone rows that flankthe hill side cemetery,that hangs and flows,marble chips and chips off marble, chip paper,scree of lager cans and driven flowers;sunlight […]
Read more
“A Literal Littoral” by Charles J. March III
Will we ever make it through the foreshore? Our erosive time is lost in this hour. Did we make the most of the coast? For sure. The beaches marooned our […]
Read more
“Lookalike” by Cameron Morse
It’s funny how franticallya few leaves appear tobe waving at me when I liftmy eyes to the maplethat tried to kill me yesterdaydropping a hefty javelinjust a couple feet frommy […]
Read more
“Tethered” by Sarette Danae
His is a lariat love, beginning with a wobbleAs it starts to unwind. Then stretching fastInto a wide-spreading circle, swinging wild,Arcing high, landing without warning,Just a thump and a cinch. […]
Read more
“The Wish” by Paul Rabinowitz
What if I couldpaint like youpiercing light throughdarkening skies if I could weave storiesby blending chaptersabout love and discontent what if I stood nakedsang love songsthat pry hearts openlike the […]
Read more
“Brutal Roux” by Elyse Jancosko
Becca add morebutter Becca. That’s no way tomake a roux. Don’t just measure on a whim.Your flour and fat. Or fluid and fault.Meat drippings, maybe. That ratio. That ratio!That’s what […]
Read more
“Bird Calls over Puget Sound” by Sarette Danae
There is no chirping from gulls, no chatter back and forth,No songs at sunrise or ushering in night. No lonely callsFor a lover to echo back. Among gulls There is […]
Read more
“Still in the City” by DS Maolalai
on hills by park pathwaysand beds of fresh petal,we collapse on our elbowsand tightly scrubbed grass.twist off ourbackpacks, wet with the weightof the sun and the weightof our warm cansof […]
Read more
“Tenderness” by Mary Paulson
Through the eye of a dream,the round pit of a binocular opening,I recognize myselfstanding in front of a stranger,his gun barrel pressedagainst the bone between my breasts. We’re in a […]
Read more
“To an Armoire” by Goddfrey Sue Hammit
The armoire tips from out the truckbed withThe same uncertain, blind leap of a fishFlopping from a boat sole, hoping only to landSomewhere wet, to break a surface and fill […]
Read more
“Fanfare” by DS Maolalai
I piss. it feels okand then after I walkthrough the house going backto the kitchen.and you are not herein any of the house,or at least you are notin my parts […]
Read more
“Two Gates For Ghostly Dreams” by Dawn Bratton
That motherlode of Sun right thereliterally blasting me in the face with its gloryit’s so far away (1 au, to be exact), but all this brilliance over vast […]
Read more
“Searching for The Cottingley fairies” by Kim Malinowski
I. Snapshot Click. WHIRR. Shadowed still frame capturing fae.Ethereal grace magnified by child’s wonder.Muted only by adults’ misunderstanding “genuine.”Why would fae be less real if crafted by paper?Paper and glue […]
Read more
“Ruins” by Mary Paulson
Mary Paulson currently lives and works in Naples, FL. Her poems have appeared in Slow Trains, Mainstreet Rag, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Arkana, Thimble Lit Magazine, and Tipton Poetry […]
Read more
“Picnic” by Matt Dennison
Jane floats her tablecloth across the floor,sets out fruit, bread, wine, says: Here, look closely. See the red so forcefullywoven into the curtain? Mother’s blood. Scattered like burst petals across the sofa? Mother’s […]
Read more
“String Man” by Hadley James Hoyles
A heaviness paws at the groundsupporting the birch-wood tablewithout sound, left in the lurchwith this godforsaken mourning shroud. He lives so little, his face can matchthe umbra where the light […]
Read more
“The Sands of Time” by Rebecca Johnson
Amber, scarlet, gilded daffodil. All sits quiet, calm,and the sun sets as I turn to you. It takes a second but then I see a granuleof sand that chips away, […]
Read more
“No Dreamin’ at the Double Tree” by Suzanne S. Rancourt
everything smells like soap except that one hallway smeared withvolatile coconut particles, reminds me of that porn theatre in somedank Indianapolis district wild with heavy air and greasy tanninghuts, but […]
Read more
“Avril” by Hadley-James Hoyles
The dull beep raises my guardas the seconds canter in the frostlit up by an anaemic starin the echoes of the morning. A glib voice asserts itselfinto my tame fantasy:-Not […]
Read more
“Hope is a Blue Jay” by Rebecca Johnson
I.As snow settles upon the landand brings with it crisp, frozen air,I’ll hear the cardinal’s jarring callas it echoes in my anxious mind. The cold and weary world revealsthat ancient […]
Read more
“Pennies for Pilgrims” by Julie Allyn Johnson
Julie Allyn Johnson, a sawyer’s daughter from the American Midwest, began writing poetry after her retirement from IT work in 2017. She loves hiking, gravel-travel photography, riding bikes, altered books […]
Read more
“The Dunes” by John Grey
A walk over the dunes, round a naked headland crisp white sand the walk liberating an escape from routine the hues golden, rising and flowing, and taking account of my […]
Read more
“sky shocked night” by Robin Wyatt Dunn
sky shocked nightterrific lashesturning bright the nails in the coffin of the bluetrembling each one of us appointedlike idle children choosing teamsour regaliaonly ordinary hats and shoesshining the bruised curl […]
Read more
“Waiting” by Christine Webster-Hansen
Eyes linger, unchanged photos thickened with dust,body-locked, estranged face gazing at the mirror,clutching at the mind, recalling memories dimly-flung,cycling again through sitcom and rerun.Bras holding the biblical fall,suspended breasts clasped […]
Read more
“North Jersey” by John O’Brien
Train tops tick tackingnext to half melted snow banksholding up the trafficlike everything else.Ruminating on pavementin our collective toyotawhich will always havethose wheezing tires.My face melts at the stop light.Another […]
Read more
“The Surgeon” by Cameron Morse
If I check my Facebookfor likes I must want to be liked but why no one who sends me wishes knows my birthday * Would […]
Read more
“Waking Up in California” by Jennifer Novotney
My mother is already uplong retired from work, she putters aroundher house all day, buying things and giving them awaycalling friends, taking short walkskeeping herself busy in the hot heat […]
Read more
“Jupiter’s Raindrops” by John O’Brien
Jupiter’s raindrops area phenomenon thatfollows close behindmoonlight and aftersexand the sonnetof moments wherecollecting my pantsmixes deliberately withstaring and thispale shimmer ofmelancholy. This isa lesson inanger, incorporating goodsexualized, paltry moodsand little […]
Read more
“Turning Back, Going Forward” by E Martin Pederson
It seems like paradise, but it’s a mirage. No more concrete walkways through the wired treelings, by the serious cyclers, no kids with frisbee dogsNo more lawnmowers and leaf-blowers and […]
Read more
“Physics and the Corridor Removed” by James B. Nicola
When I greet “semi-strangers,” sometimes strangers, with Hellos and How-Are-Yous you say they do not warrant, it’s because of Physics, and the empty seat that stared back at the class […]
Read more
“The System of Considerations” by Keko Prijatelj
InsectsPerfected in that specific environmentIn thousands of nights & darksCrashing into that bulbLight impacts of ferocious attacksCongratulated admiredEach character with its own specialtyA monolith of single purposeIn thousands of nights […]
Read more
“Perfusion” by Cameron Morse
Perfuse mebrain scanner Push your fluidsthrough my blood vessels my tissues Let whatever in me that is at issue be scanned interior scar star-birth tumor […]
Read more
“The Body Electric in Several Takes” by Edison Jennings
An ivy educated American male, bespoke suited but modest and sincere, once seated and lighted to good effect and confident of his look and manner will, when gently prodded, confess […]
Read more
“The Road to Cavalry” by Arthur L Wood
How many days to Calvary? I asked the rich man’s child. Depends on how you’re travelling; Are you dying or exiled Or seeking sweet contentedness? And then the rich man […]
Read more
“The Mosquito and the Bell Jar” by Carol Motta
Our balsa-sweet Mosquito flies low and slow into the burning sun, undetectable by radarI hear only air scratching past the belly of the holdNo bomb today, just a tired man […]
Read more
“We have Always Lived in the Castle” by Tara Campbell
We have always lived within these walls,this gleaming, shining castle on a hill,a beacon held aloft for one and allto marvel at, imagining the thrill of breathing liberty and chipping […]
Read more
“Diadem for the End of the World” by Randi Sanders
Seven billion was the end predicted by that movie where the population was fed on a questionable combination of soy, lentils, and plankton that wasn’t really plankton because we needed […]
Read more
“Antidote” by Kate Copeland
A fire sunset facing her, thunder didn’t show, how much she even wished for this sky to hurt, to rive in two, boiling the river This house helps her to […]
Read more
“The Borderland Furies” by Oisin Breen
On questioning circumstance;One must accept that it is often mere collision.That it is neither the (un)holy they, nor a waxwork trinity, at fault for the collusion of the elements and […]
Read more
“Strangers in a Strange Lawyer’s Home” by Jason McGlone
This solarium could be a craggyoverhang in the desert or a yurtburning sandalwood inside, plates of rosewaterjellies awaiting us, or a dumpster letting in moonlightbetween the cracks in its lid […]
Read more
“A Report on the Afterlife” by Michael Mintrom
The bus climbed slowly up the gravel road,the inside all dust and sweat, smellingof leather seats, of engine oil.The travellers rubbed together, chatting,recent arrivals to the peninsula,sharing stories from past […]
Read more
“All the Water in the World” by Kate Copeland
A grey afternoon and when itcontinues to rain, a clueless patternleaves pools on our balcony, tearson the skylight.By now we knew who we are and asdrakes parade near the breaking […]
Read more
“The Veil” by Oisin Breen
The I, That which separates me from you, Was the first of our sins. Thus, at rest on the sun-bleached water, We have learned that comfort is the father of […]
Read more
“On Being Home” by Isaiah R. Hicks
1.And you wish it were easier to writeAbout how you’ve been feeling lately,The thought of being back homeFor the first time in a while placating,Quite pitifully,The time you spend alone […]
Read more
“An Account of Our Precipice” by Jason McGlone
We three stare at each otherit’s Reservoir Dogs: BurgeoningDomestic Dispute Edition Our mouths trained guns,words chambered, Hello translates directly to Say something stupid, BrianAnother Hello says Let’s not do thisMy […]
Read more
“The Waltz of War and Peace” by Edmund Evanson
Edmund Evanson is an aspiring creative-writer who penned feature stories and film reviews for The Star newspaper, Malaysia’s leading English-language daily, in 2017 and 2018. He earned his Bachelor of […]
Read more
“Neighbor” by Darrell Petska
on his roof checking shingles for fleasscouring the ground for alien invaders Hey Don! I say, but he’spolishing tools till his face smiles backdigging more holes to Chinaparing trees to […]
Read more
“More” by Tom Barlow
Boxes everywhere, boxes overflowing, traffic conesstacked in the parlor, a brown Christmas tree in thedining room peeks out from behind a tower ofnested plastic chairs. Flattened cans in milk crates […]
Read more
“thick crusts of midnight in the late Ordovician, a wilderness of morning elsewhere” by Kate Shannon
i.other things live easy, you knowI suppose I, too, live easy in some ways.a domination of oceans gatheringa braying of old bones, dust and then nothinga quietude of less wrathful […]
Read more
“Sold Sign” by Kate Koch
The sunlight that crawls between hydrangea leaveswhile moss roses stretch and mouse through cracks in the stairs Neighbors who share their sweet ouzowith stories about Portugal under low apple branches […]
Read more
“Recreate” by Shannon Cuthbert
Floating, ghost horse wakes in a fieldExactly like his own, just that he can’t touchThe soft weeds crawling up the fence.At first, he shivers into invisibility.His long colt legs, long […]
Read more
“ghazal for aguas del sur” by Kate Shannon
once, mothers waited for their dead children in damp bodies untilno more noises crept from their wind-polyp’d throats, until a dozen moons passed, a skinned and rising tidethat never overtakes […]
Read more
“LaMarcus Thompson’s Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway” by John H. Johnson
August humidity in Coney Island makes the darkness much heavier,Candles dimly light the lock to match the skeleton key,As darkness provides anonymity to faces hiding their shame,A passing roach gawks […]
Read more
“Dinnertime” by Ulyses Razo
Waiting for a chicken leg to broilI near the end of a chapter of Eco’s bookThe Name of the Rose.In my pocket is a timer ticking off the secondsAnd I […]
Read more
“Little Gem Magnolia” by Paul Rabinowitz
I In an old cafe on Frenchmen Street in The Faubourg Marigny, a ceiling fan churns, throwing dust into the eyes of an old painting of Madame Rose Nicaud. A […]
Read more
“Slate Cleaned on the Bluff” by D. R. James
Up here, the intervals of thundering wavesat dawn signal churning, pebble-rivensculpting by water’s paws: crucible likea cleanse. Low clouds, contesting gravity,fabricate braids of gray sleeves embracingthe stoical landscape staged below: […]
Read more
“now in the park july no–” by Robin Wyatt Dunn
now in the park july no– no parks are left. we survive inside the maelstrom of infinity, a glitch inside the program of identity late capitalism–no early capitalism– what is […]
Read more
“Red Summer” by Chariklia Martalas
It was the days where the night would not come, for the sun held the sky hostage just by a look. It was the tyrannical glare of a red summer […]
Read more
“Untitled” by Simon Perchik
Even without a caress its petals wait, try more red than usual then sweets, sent along with the scent from the latest hillside till one grave blossoms before the others […]
Read more
“Gardens” by Andrew DeBella
I I plunged my shovel into bare ground One foot stomping its edge, Tearing dirt like paper with needle-like precision My garden was full; I was careful to ration in […]
Read more
“At the Art Opening” by John Grey
No one is enlightening this mass of all masses. Everywhere I look, the paintings are in a language my inner voice can’t translate. I feel as if my eyes are […]
Read more
“Skins” by Carson Pytell
Gallery of grotesqueries whence names are staked as pilgrims blameless to manifest that destiny, hands out hand me downs. Accompanied, individuality affronts. Individually: unencumbered; loving, hating, living, killing, not wiping […]
Read more
“Pour toi, mon amour” by Tasnia Nahla
Chaos sings, we areDisintegrating whole, drunkWith the city’s disillusionmentHalf and half and nowhere reallysick sipping stars, picking dirt off soles unmet; yet to birth new fire –mere – the thoughts […]
Read more
“Thin Places” by Steven Croft
Through a broad valley of baked brown dirt and sparse green trees,past mudbrick and stone villages of flat-topped houses, we climbthe Humvees up the mountain, over the quickly shrinking road […]
Read more
“Upon Being Published” by Ulyses Razo
Riding shotgun, I look out the upper right cornerof the windshield, writing in a blackEnglish car,and see a dark thing: a dot,with a wing, twirling and twisting, (convulsing parenthetically),almost intentionally, […]
Read more
“Pop” by Benjamin Schmitt
Getting all the feels with SZA tonight as that rack of wine from yesterday makes its way through my wrists and ankles Sometimes a voice can bury its dead in […]
Read more
“Glass” by Chariklia Martalas
Did they tell you Inferno was made from glass? Clear as truth turned upside down You can see through to the bottom of the world An everywhere that exists below […]
Read more
“Ode to a Speck” by Thomas Piekarski
Out of respect I acknowledge you’re a speck on a papered wall in the midst of a tornado. You’re expected to show your worth, follow directives they demand. While others […]
Read more
“Field Trip” by John Grey
You wake up on the fourth floor to the garbled coo of some window-shopping pigeons, dress quickly, pick at breakfast, clamber down the dark stairwell with ears closed. Today, no […]
Read more
“Zoom In-Out-In and Cry” by Hibah Shakhez
Earth o’ mine green red brown and blue, They ask me which colour you are And laugh when I cannot answer. Could I lie you were one all through? But […]
Read more
“Bones” by Japhy Mitchell
The winds switch faster thanThe clouds can circle Under avalanches of ink Saviours and Saints allBuried beneath Invisible tombstonesProphets gone, mixed with dionysian delusions Bound and bold Eating them for lifeStuffing […]
Read more
“Foe” by Matthew Chamberlin
Hidden under sheets of ice invisible as dreams in glass comes smoldering behind, my foe who shoulders fire and steel aside, rides elevators high and low and sneers at all […]
Read more