Spring 2013
House-Sitting, Woman in the Diorama, and Roadside by Annah Browning
_____ There is a man inside/the house, teaching/the living room how to burn.
Woman at the Well and Listening by Meriwether Clarke
_____ My skin stretches,/holding all these pieces in
If Only I’d Thought of It by Christopher Citro
_____ Did they sit around the dinner table/ taking turns saying: “It’s a nasty habit.”
Think of a House by Okla Elliott
_____ The father doesn’t drink, but he used to./The mother isn’t happy, but she was
Bystander’s Lament by Katy Miller
_____ I am a witness to the wars,/ a witness to the witnesses of wars,
On the Flood, Grown More Perilous by Brianna Noll
_____ We think/we want to feel/the sparks—/dive in and glow.
Everett by Ann Pelletier
_____ We come to the place where my son is/ and his name.
I Go Like This by Dara-Lyn Shrager
_____ Somebody with ill intentions/ has come to my door.
Elegy and Self-Portrait in Binary by P. J. Williams
_____ Through the door broken open: smoke,/ honeysuckle, ashed-over daffodils.
Fall 2012
Two Views: Duke Street and Two Views: Wes and the Dead Bird by Joellen Craft
_____I found you/ something dead, something/so full of potential
Honeysuckle Ghost in the First Baptist Church Back Pew by J. Scott Brownlee
_____I believe in this world,/and this town,/ and each face in it as you do God.
cincinnati by Alexander Chisum
_____she thinks about killing/ time. how 9:59 a.m. murders/ 9:58 a.m.
Never-Ending Birds by Sandra Marchetti
_____ I swallow, lift at my chest where the freckles/crack, where the wet wings gleam.
Little Exercise by Michael Marberry
_____ You cannot write/about the body because you worship the body.
My Drawling by Alice Bolin
_____ I used the brittle prairie colors/of our teenage July
Rick Santorum by Michael Meyerhofer
_____ Poetry has a personal objection to pornography,/ not to mention condoms
Super Tuesday by Nate Marshall
Resettlement by Jacob Newberry
_____sometimes I am dreaming/and when I am dreaming the goats are calling
Parable and Three Women by Rosanna Oh
_____On the porch,/ he lit the match/ and she held the letter still/ until the ashes broke.
The Hospital Room by George Moore
_____It’s better not simply to imagine/ the bleached walls as shorelines,/ the antiseptic smell of after-death,
Summer 2012
Repeat Live Capture by Brad Clompus
_____ When you get/to the field by the river,/open the lid, expect/anything.
Cul-de-Sac and Vine River by F. Daniel Rzicznek
_____ The map is a hunger for dimension,/what meaning becomes becomes meaning
Pantoum from Wilson Pickett Interview by Harold Whit Williams
_____After mother knelt down & hollered for my soul/ She’d hit me with anything – skillets & stove wood -
Water-bearing by Ashley Keyser
_____ The broad bronze women need no one/now to save them, unremarked-on/as anything else aging in public spaces.
A Story We Might Follow by Joe Wilkins
_____ We shoe up and slip down drifts,/wend our slow way through oak/and heavy-headed sumac
Dendrochronology by John A. Nieves
_____They were mining for time, but time was not cooperating.
Mother: An Aggadah and Damage Ready by Sarah Marcus
_____Kirsten strokes my hair and says,/maybe you were put on this earth for your mother
Jake by Jonathan Brown
_____ We all become dust, but some of us just enjoy being swept away.
Tropic Troping Bird by Stephen Massimilla
_____ Our regard for each other a series/of seconds raring/to stare and stare.
Strange Victory, Strange Defeat by Jeff Alessandrelli
_____ Invisible hands,/ invisible arms, invisible feet,/the snake rises up
Dowsing by Gwendolyn Jensen
_____Soft and slow, the water moves,/Comely, cool, it lingers
Destruction Myth and David and the Anatomical Venus by Emma Sovich
_____In these their last days alive, the workers bit at the remaining honeycomb, chewing it to soften it then spitting it out.
Dream of Adolescence by Leanne Chabalko
_____ In the field I find sick bottles and arrowheads/I see an elk rub antlers across a chokecherry tree
To a Girl by Rachel Marie Patterson
_____ In the end, what we were given/was not only violence.
Spring 2012
Late Summer: To the Bride, Gaunt Pleasures, Rain Off the Gulf of Guinea, and The Sorting Grounds by Todd Fredson
_____We sort the last of our scraps into bins./ Potatoes that are not entirely rotten—/ we can’t take anything.
Venus De Milo by Christopher Ankney
_____She was vicious/ with inequalities
xylem/deployment by Amanda Bales
_____vascular bundles harden/ to a back yard pin oak
Epithalamium and La Tarantata by Claudia Cortese
_____Ferns unfist when she passes, crows blacken/ above her
Blue Talk Bites by William Ford
_____In pain’s stark spot/ I blow a toy/ copy of Bird’s alto
To the Protestor at the Pride Parade by Andrew Kozma
_____Your idea of Heaven is a small nut no one can crack.
This Is Siren Country and Self-portrait with a Teak Fleet of Sailing Ships by Lo Kwa Mei-en
_____Once you were as empty as a wind-filled sail,/ but you’ll never fall asleep again. You are welcome.
Darlings by Jenny Lederer
_____At night/ they could hear their father/ murmuring to his trees, my darlings—
The Ash Trees at Midnight by Jacob Newberry
_____oh quiet earth/ you have welcomed me/ into your sodden arms
The Foundling Wheel (2), Prayer, and A Proof by Blas Falconer
_____Let it be too-early light, your first/ memory, the dog lapping from the water bowl.
Fall 2011
A Word for Berryman by Paul Allen
_____Dog tired, suisired, a thing so heavy–/ I doubt leapt, jumped, throw les mots juste/
_____for his worn doing.
Stray Dog Prayers by Ryan Smith
_____it smells of a city built in the rain,/ of candle light in a goldenrod coffin.
Lazarus, To a Predator, and For My Brother by David McLoghlin
_____One by one, old men take him by both wrists/ and are unable to speak;
Rural Causality by Weston Cutter
_____The rorschach of a Thursday, how god /in certain ruralities is what elsewhere/
_____would be called weather
Mandolin in White Wood, Inlay by Joshua Brown
_____With the double barrel breached/ amid the honeysuckle,/ his trigger finger cracks
The Sirens by Tyler Mills
_____Pilot whales beach their black bodies/
on sandbars off the Cape. With my grandparents//
_____I watched them dying on TV in August
Joe Cuomo, Local Weatherman, Tests The Old Idea Of Heaven by Sean Bishop
_____That the day before my father’s death// was National Skinny Dipping Day,/ Filet
_____Mignon Day, and Left Hander’s Day.
Litany by Rachael Lyon
_____She thought this place was haunted before/ his mouth snuffed voices into nothing, wet fingers/
_____on a burning wick.
Idyll, Prayer Handles, and Quart of View by Erin Radcliffe
_____Rind and yolk freefall, infuriating/ the gluttony of birds to brine
Black Witch Moth by Phillip Williams
_____The moth lifts its dress and everything beneath/ its hem’s shadow sings
Becoming Human II by Jade Benoit
_____Somehow, my hair stopped growing in patches.
Upon the morning of the spring equinox I steal precisely ten words from John Berryman by Alice George
_____When the starlings finish drinking from the gutters/ their bodies will be slightly heavier.
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Summer 2011
Getting It Right by Andrew Najberg
____Let’s look at it this way:/ we are shepherds on the hillside.
Early In The Day Of The Solar Eclipse, XII., and Before The World Went To Hell by Miriam Bird Greenberg ____Early in the day of the solar eclipse/ the old men who would still tell their names/ to soldiers passed ____time combing their beards
The Mummy Boycotts Easter by Patrick Whitfill
____Naturally, at every resurrection there’s/ at least one nonplussed and unconvinced/ hooligan
A voice from the country of my dreams by Landa wo
The Rise of Communism, Robert Frost in the Slaughter House, and Self-Portrait on Cigarette Foil I by Craig Blais
____The first night, I thought stray dogs were fucking in the streets.
Lesson by Jenny Johnson
____When it is already after seven/ and in the lit pantry all she can do is study your countenance
On Hunger by Elizabeth Wade
____I am thinking of the verb “to conspire,”
To the Heart by Ori Fienberg
____There is a faraway island, famed for its brightly colored and surprisingly textured mosaics, in _____which the people have eyes, not on their heads, but on the bottom of their feet.
Red Doors by Joe Bueter
____The smell some nights/ could’ve simply been the marsh./ Or crustaceans and bacon grease.
Therapy Dog by Phil Estes
____These girls tie a pit-bull/ To one of the pillars of their house.
Storm Windows (Imago) by John Nieves
____Salt over the shoulder and the babble-down evening/ set the stage for this:
The Horizon and The Plains by Christopher DeWeese
____The air inside the air/ kept getting smaller
from Winter: aphorisms by Sarah Vap
____Someone cries every few minutes in our family
Spring 2011
Grace and Ode to the Flute by Ross Gay
which pulling, pulling, he / begs you to take the tube
You Are Wanted in the Office by Naomi Shihab Nye
far from the man with a shovel wiping his brow
What Are You Supposed To Do Anyway? by Jack Ridl
I could take that at least two ways, / maybe more.
Schistosoma mansoni, Pledge, and Thinking of Anne Frank in the Middle of Winter by Roger Reeves
Even in the ordinary world of thread, / wood, and little souls, let us be two red canoes.
The Barbecued Man and A Brief History of the Future by Jeffrey McDaniel
I have nightmares of a crowded lunchtime street, a gust / of wind lifting my new face away, like a silk tissue,
Photuris Lucicrescens by Lois Marie Harrod
In the loitering dusk / the lightening bugs begin / their dart and dwindle
Bildungsroman by Brittany Cavallaro
Her mother’s lips still the color / of the yew berries that could not / be eaten in threes
Salt Marshes by Janee Baugher
Miles of coarse white. / The blue-black sky behind him like an apology.
September 1st, 1923 by Fani Papageorgiou
on a hot, clear day in Tokyo,
Langston Blue by Jericho Brown
Blues for the angels kicked out / Of heaven. Blues for the angels / Who miss them still. Blues for / My people and whatever water / They know. O weary drinkers
Fall 2010
Sonnet Crown for Blind Tom and Harry T. Burleigh meets Antonin Dvorak, 1893 by Tyehimba Jess
The whole plantation would be called to sing / and dance in Master Epp’s large parlor room –
A Genesis Text for Larry Levis, Who Died Alone by Norman Dubie
we all stand / In a succession of etceteras
Four-Letter Word by Hugh Martin
Dying / is part of training / for war in Iraq. / We leave in two months.
My Future Therapist Asks About Rage by Cathy Linh Che
Men in my life walked in and out of the room, / tramping snow.
Cotton Candy, Special Orders, and Fast Break by Edward Hirsch
Oral Poetry
The Lone Ranger, Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear by Jeannine Savard
He lived in a cabin on a frozen lake, / snake-sitting his sister’s taut “Baby-Boy” / while she waitressed the season in the Carribean.
Apology with Axe and In the Soak by Bridget Talone
Never mind that / the frogs are singing and / they sing like a swing-set.
Late Afternoon with Chagall by Michelle Peñaloza
leaves which unfurl / into women, brides, flying out over the marketplace, / over baskets of berries, beet bundles, green stalks of leeks—
Summer 2010
A Little Less Kettledrum, Please by D. A. Powell
Hear me, up there in the bleachers? / I may be the least of all the piccolos.
[These diamond weeds are], [Again by the windmills' wings], Microscope, and Circle and Rectangle by Maya Sarishvili, translated from Georgian by Timothy Kercher, Ani Kopalian, and Nene Giorgadze
a thousand drawers would open at once: / medicine, linen, jewelry, and secret-paper drawers, / impish smells emanating
Armando by Yaul Perez-Stable Husni
Yesterday, it was a caravan. / Today, it is by car.
November 21, 1937 by César Vallejo, translated by Amy Demas Grunder
My house, unhappily, is a house, / a floor, fortunately, where my beloved / little spoon lives, with its little inscription, / my dear skeleton, finally illiterate, / my penknife, the perpetual cigarette.
The Girl and Memory by Alice Neiley
I thought of you pocketing / stones from the snow-rimmed beach, then piling them up all around your house. I / thought of when you stopped cold / as a gull snapped up into the sky, light on his underbelly— / look, you said, and I did.
Spring 2010
Southern Light and Honeycombed by Rickey Laurentiis
What more / are porches made for if not for rain? I know if it / were honey and fell steady as it does now / to make sweet candy of the roads, we’d be out there.
Backfire 2 and Energumen by Heather Derr-Smith
I want to be your young wife / Thirty hours pregnant, / Neruda opened at my pelvis.
Elephant by Yaul Perez-Stable Husni
Elephant, Elephant! / Tell me again of the time / you climbed / up the Homa mountain,
Our Lady of the Candelabra, Our Lady of the Pomegranate, and or the apple-russet silk by Sarah Maclay
We can nearly taste it. We can hear it rustle / as she moves, as she must, / eventually.