vagabondcitypoetry

Something happened& somethingis going to happen & I don’t careabout any of that action.Emily is naked & breathing slowlybeneath the coversof this morning & really, I don’t carethat she’s naked, either.She’s breathing & I’m breathing& any weather wouldhold us together. Darren C. Demaree is the author of sixteen poetry collections, most recently “a child walks […]

if you have everbeen an outsider at school, thought that college was cruel, isolated yourself to keep troubleat bay, depended on a bottle of Old Monk to wash loneliness away, read Maya Angelouand still ended at the therapist’s twice a week, lived from weekend to weekend till the yearwas out of reach, made out with […]

after David Graeber In the time of plague we turned awayfrom the relentless chirp of workplayworkand placed our ears against the door, listeningfor footsteps approaching down the hallwayoutside the locked room of capitalism.In the shrinking of our circle was a new rhythm,melodies we weren’t sure how to singdrifting through the walls in snatches.With nowhere to […]

Author of Hinge (NPRP, 2015), Emily Wolahan’s poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, SixthFinch, and Oversound. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is currently pursuing aPh.D. in Anthropology and Social Change (CIIS) and is a Poetry Editor at Tinderbox PoetryJournal.

chicory grows by the roadside, their soft-blunted petals shading blue to purple in mimicry of dawn. i don’t think we ever talked through a sunrise. we came close, maybe, but mostly i remember easing the back door open to stand ankle-deep in melting snow. i remember looking up at wispy pinpricks of starlight, wondering if […]

the sea sun-sick, sun-washed, sun-kissed the sea reckless and in love with the sun the sea with a heart of a fig, a pomegranate, a lemon the sea in the ear of the moon, the sea as the mouth of the moon, the sea vanishing into skins, the sea rebirthing skins, the sea as the […]

I don’t go in. just noticed it in passing, pacing loops on a layover I am an hour’s flight and three hours of waiting from you I’m not one to imagine my own future, don’t build a life of what ifs, if this then that’s. But a chapel in an airport makes me stop Are […]

After Olivia Gatwood I want to feel summer again like a girl like she is standing right next to me breathing hot breath into my ear she whispers like car rides and smells like sweat and is never still, still anything like when I was fourteen and rode my red bicycle to the ocean every […]

So we rent a car & drive to the wild of Pennsylvania. Crops tall as biblical women, their heads flinching. Nobody lives here, it seems. Houses but they’re empty, lights but they’re off. We float to our hotel room & polaroid in the mirror. Swimming pool midnight, chlorine-safe. I couldn’t drown if I tried. We […]

The taste is ritualistic: Peeling off your jacket. Cradling white-fleshed language  like distilled liquor parting father’s cracked lips. Sinking a tooth into grime and hoping to consume what pain has not taken from you. Two fingers jabbed in the jam jar — Maybe I will make a home out of this, you say. You cast […]

On the doors of a church, where the windows run miles into the sky so high that god herself must reach up to open them a notice reads: no poems.  To my religion, I thank you.  Under your tutelage You taught me the way to live In spite of what you expected,  I admire your […]

You tell me how, in his Nobel prize speech, William Faulkner said the only thing worth writing is the human heart in conflict with itself. We are underneath the first tree to jump the gun on Autumn. Holding back October like a yawn, we stay in the park until dusk starts apologizing for the day, […]

cockroach: viscera stew, eyes puddling in the milk your baby cousin vomited yesterday. by sunrise the survivors will scuttle away from the wallowing zongzi, rice gummed golden to your tongue, soybeans kissing the melted flesh of chickens your popo killed herself, hands over hinged neck. your throat curdling as the feathers tattoo the freckled refrigerator; […]

You long for the sea but the city calls you, drunk at 7am. You kiss a girl with a monarch mouth, lips lilac, wings a soft letter. You feel glaring lights on skin, dizzy-tired, wishing hard for the sunset. You watch the towers, tuxedo-taped, choking on their Paco Rabanne. You listen to rain gulping pavements […]

daughter, sister, & friend. A boy. fragmented. Creation of Adam, dropped. A fresco shatter some kind of Picasso. Where there was man there is blank space, turned inward. Nebraskan trailer, I don’t belong here. My mother calls me by a different name, speaking suddenly let’s go see the doctor dear. Tom & John are swell […]