Free Verse

From all you can is the best you can

i once shoved my foot through glass

getting to know my own anger

 

its patches of stupid

bloody love

 

stress is just a socially acceptable

word for fear

 

i’m ashamed of feeling too much

 

river edges like a cut

of laughter

 

left too long in the sun, a bloated

...

Selina Boan

Dick Pics

Two dicks, sitting in

my daughter’s inbox,

like men without hats,

waiting for any door

to open. 

 

*

Sighting a stranger’s penis

used to be rare. Remember raincoats?

Like a flash of lightning,

like a Scratch ‘N Win ticket –

sometimes glittering knock-off watches,

sometimes a flapping...

Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang
1978

From: Incantation: Memory of Water

Tonight, a strand of my great-grandmother’s hair

sashes an amber beer bottle discarded by a tourist.

 

A white thread of my grandmother’s baptismal robe

is a bangle on a wrist of kelp

waving its arm on St. Phillip’s eastern coast.

 

The ocean does not hunger

but its mouths gape and hold, like errant flecks

of...

Brandon Wint
1988

For You Shall Be Called to Account

The ancestors of everyone I’ve let into my body

are gathered in a small room with one window,

no lights. Yes, the room is crowded. Yes, there

are no chairs. Yes, they are talking. Why are we

here, says the Nazi resister. Where are the chairs,

says the Viking (no horns). Where is...

Leah Horlick

FLOOD

The hallway is an empty

riverbed, smooth and barren.

At three o’clock classroom

 

doors open like dams.

            Gullies of teens stream

out, to become one

           flowing body. A torrent

of fauxhawks and ponytails

           channels along the linoleum.

 

           The drowned boy...

Tyler B. Perry
1980

A Thin Plea

(Falteringly)

 

Our national bird ­– for years – was – as A M Klein said –

the rocking chair

 

I don’t know what our national bird is now – but my totem bird is

the killdeer

 

Its names – odd mannerisms – & cry – explain bits about me – in

riddles

 

My daily writing self...

Phil Hall
1953

Weed Killer

Our mother gave us a sack of weed killer

the size of a toddler, and told us

to spread it on the front lawn.

 

My sister and I lugged it there.

A light cloud of white powder

drifted up to our nostrils

and down to our tongues, blooming sour

wherever it touched membrane.

We scooped the stuff out with teenaged zeal...

Fiona Tinwei Lam

Sorting through Documents at Dawn

three crosses appear

on the tv screen

 

following a

sweep of my hair

 

that felt like your hand

 

maybe i dreamt it

but i so badly

 

want it to be you

(in whatever form)

 

near

 

not in the light through

which you’ve disappeared

 ...

Shirley Camia

Nocturne for a Moving Train

The trees I’ve glimpsed from the window

of a night train were

the saddest trees.

 

They seemed about to speak,

then—

             vanished like soldiers.

 

The hostesses handed out starched linens for sleep.

Passengers bent over small icons

of sandwiches.

 

In a tall glass, a spoon...

Valzhyna Mort

A Hundred and Fifty Pounds

Each adult will be allowed 150 pounds

 

and each child will be allowed 75 pounds of baggage.

 

—B.C. Security Commission, 1942

 

             after Kayla Isomura’s The Suitcase Project

 

In some, the luggage lies open

like a mouth mid-sentence.

In others, closed...

Michael Prior

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink

                  of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

because she has to pray in the store or miss

the mandatory prayer time for Muslims

She does it with great poise, balancing

herself with one plump matronly arm

against the...

Mohja Kahf

Not the Music

Not the music.

It is this other thing

I keep from all of them

that matters, inviolable.

 

I scratch in my journals,

a mouse rummaging through cupboards,

nibbling on a crust of bread, apple skins,

chewing the edges of photographs, the small

details of a life. I hoard and save,

place one thing inside...

Lorna Crozier
b. 1948

Editing the Prairie

Well, it’s too long for one thing

and very repetitive.

Remove half the fields.

Then there are far too many fences

interrupting the narrative flow.

Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences.

There’s not enough incident either,

the story is very flat.

Can’t you write in a mountain

or at least a decent-sized hill...

Don Kerr

Family Reunions

The other people quit their stone fields to come here.

They slip in from nights that even the snow abandons.

They leave ashes in their glasses

          and stains on the table.

The house is littered with bits of their hair and skin.

Bones clatter through the holes in their pockets.

 

All night long their hands scythe the air....

Karen Connelly

Spacetime

We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious

text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill

through our skulls. Every cm2 of oxygen overflowing

with bank PINS, girls in yoga pants, the frequencies

of whale cries. Digital clouds brim with selfies and rain

videos on how to cook coconut shrimp. Sepia-filtered

...

Yusuf Saadi

Un Docteur Anglophone Traduit Les Inquiétudes De Son Patient Avec Google/An English Speaking Doctor Translates the Concerns of his Patient with Google