By Shireen Madon
It’s as though the birds all know each other, and how naively
they seem to believe the world will go…
they seem to believe the world will go…
Explore Poems: Ekphrasis
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- By Rochelle Hurt[if you marry your confession, you can live alone inside it. no priest behind the window. no wife or…
- By Rochelle Hurt[as jumping from a plane. easier—a bridge. as tripping on a shoelace. as blinking your eyes. as breathing…
- By Rochelle Hurt[all my exes agree i’m too sensitive. inside i’m keeping track of slights on one long receipt, a diaristic…
- 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... - By Mag GabbertThe effect—for those three hundred years, while the cupid remained hidden—was a kind of silence.
Like… - 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... - 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... - 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... - 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... - By Samiya Bashir— as i was saying
your
(idea of) death ain’t mine(s)
i(’ll) sprout any how
(flourish!)
your rot flesh don’t make me no
(ting) never mind
— s... - 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… - 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... - 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... - 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... - By Pamilerin JacobNeither milkweed
nor rose-apple
in Schenck’s Anguish,
only a murder
of crows sprouting
at the perimeter
of a mother’s
suffering. Nature is… - By Margaret DannerIn a Chicago museum, these small bells of Benin
are bringing their charm to a foreign scene, without ringing.
The concave cylindrical draping of some
is as prim as the poise of a Quaker maid,
while the rare quadrangular forms of the rest,
with their... - 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...