Poetry – Page 13 – VAGABOND CITY

OPEN SEASON | Torii Johnson

People in the south have mouths that cradle their vowels like a hunter holds his gun. Don’t kiss in the car in case we get run off the road. Speak slow ‘round the molasses of their thoughts and savor the sound.

Everything, Poetry

MEMORIES OF LOVING A GIRL WHO SANG THE SOUL ELECTRIC | Martina Dominique Dansereau

i. Her eyes caused earthquakes, tectonic plates colliding and sparks leaping from her gaze into mine when they crashed, inciting tremors beneath my skin. The way my synapses fired love letters from neuron to neuron to every part of my body until it tingled with love like a fever coursing hot- and-cold from her sly […]

Everything, Poetry

A Stonefruit | Clair Dunlap

TWO YEARS LATER I TELL HIM VERY CLEARLY TO STOP TALKING TO ME. I USE THE CONCISE PHRASES I DO NOT LIKE YOU AND I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOU STOP TALKING TO ME I TELL HIM AND HE REPLIES AFFIRMATIVELY. I TELL HIM AND WHEN MY BOYFRIEND LEAVES THE KITCHEN AND HE […]

Everything, Poetry

SITA | Lakshmi Mitra

i. janaka loves me the way one loves a goddess, but not the way one loves a child. he says my hair is like a clear sky on a moonless night, my eyes are blooming with starfire, my skin is the bottled radiance of a setting sun. but i want him to say that he […]

Everything, Poetry

ODE TO MONTEREY BAY//OR// THE FIRST POEM THAT IS NOT ABOUT LOSS | Emily Alexander

the first poem without road sign poles, empty of direction. the first poem without missing teeth i know all about borrowed bodies. i was born landlocked, with a cup inside my chest, oceans deep. in california, the highway between my house and downtown traces the outlines of the pacific, both nervous bodies reaching, spooning, matching […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Poetry

CEILING | Léna García

Palm trees and military barracks fade white from the sun, the way it was before they got here and plucked all the butterflies, like candles from cake, and rust red water poured into rivers mixing red dirt with ocean, forming clay, the kind I painted and sold on the sides of desert freeways. 1964. The […]

Everything, Poetry

I AM AN ATLANTEAN EFFORT ON MYSELF | Meryem Nuh

you do not know. i move from room to room. every morning. moistening my eyes. sucking in my belly. pruning my fingers in juice of mango. weathering my history on my forehead. the women in me want different things. breathing with my hair. rubbing honey cinnamon and shine of the moon on the inside of […]

Everything, Poetry

SEPIA | Fortesa Latifi

looking back, everything is sepia to me now: the pills, the shaking, the undressing, your neck in the shadow of the lost night, the pills, your hair cut over the bathroom sink, the broken front door,

Everything, Poetry

ON OLD POTS AND NEW YEARS | Bee Walsh

Mama told me it’s important to cast a spell around nightfall on the first day of the New Year. Some years I forget & maybe those weren’t some of my best, but as the onions caramelize in the bottom of my oldest pot, I whisper some of the other secrets Mama told me about new […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Poetry

A CONVERSATION WITH AN IMAGINARY FRIEND | Becky Yeker

What does it feel like to feel? It feels like the thoughts of every living person are inside of you, like they are thumping against the side of your head and they are reflecting off of your eyeballs like they are mirror images of yourself, even when they are not you. Does it feel like […]

Everything, Poetry

BITS ON SOUR BOYS | Naomi Langer

i. Sonic We eat in his car, parked, light off, radio on, watching the sun set over the edge of suburbia. Romantic-like. If we wanted, the identical tops of a hundred gable roofs in the distance could almost look like mountains, the heat waves off of the hot summer pavement the surface of a cool […]

Everything, Poetry

COUNTING CROWS | Olivia Ladun

I like to call this counting crows. A boy told me he liked me while I was high and crying listening to some indie bullshit. My ex girlfriend smoked everyday, 3:11 pm, after school in her backyard,  and I guess that is sort of cringeworthy. Tell me you like me. I like to call this […]

Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Poetry

THIS IS THE CLOSEST I’LL GET TO PAINTING YOU | Ayah Elbeyali

the beat of your heart– one. two. three. four. the gleam of your sweat– heat. shimmer. hips. quiver. the almond of your eyes– green. kind. honey. mine. the space behind your ribs– ache. flood. furnace. blood. the palm of your hand– red. flower. touch. devour. the bend of your thumb– square. raw. hook. trace. the soft […]

Everything, Poetry

GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS AND GIRLS | Jemma Hoolahan

girl liking boys and girls girl hating labels; hating boxes, but girl loving; always loving. girl falling for crooked smiles; the quiver of eye lashes like leaves in the wind, protecting cobalt irises full of love; full of empathy.

Everything, Poetry

I AM EXACTLY LIKE A WIND STORM | Maia Irwin

I. The night is alive and so am I. II. Maybe instead of the wildfire I long to be I should be a rolling storm. III. Or maybe just the shadows. Maybe the night is harsher than the day.

Everything, Poetry

GABY, HAVE YOU DONE YOUR BEST? | Kaitlyn Crow

My first roommate in the adolescent unit had most growing on her arms and spots of mold between her toes. I didn’t realize until months later that there is nothing beautiful about that.

Everything, Poetry

UNTITLED #1| Kaitlyn Crow

i. I am the mood swings striking in the middle of the night, keeping you nocturnal past three in the morning. They call me mania, bipolar. I am your misdiagnosis, the ADHD pills that made you go insane, the tug of impulse when manic becomes the new normal.

Everything, Poetry

FROM KIERKEGAARD TO REGINE | Alex Lenkei

“Darling, dearest, dead,” Sovereign queen of my heart: You’re the sunset in a cup, you’re the ink bleeding into my marginalia of Aristotle, Kant, and Luther, and in the candlelight alone your face shines ever new across the gradient of my half-worn pages.

Everything, Poetry

GAPS | Alex Lenkei

To be a construction of signs of sighs, remembering memories of encounters that were dreams— meeting-places in the dark.

Everything, Poetry

LITTER ON THE STREETS OF LAS VEGAS | Nicole Lourette

The bare-breasted nun prays in front of children as their parents snap photos of anything but her body. She is not the memory they want of this place. Her habit hangs far below her puckered lips, and for $45, she’ll show you what spring is like on Jupiter.

Everything, Poetry

ST. ANTHONY’S RELIQUARY | Nicole Lourette

There are yellow roses at Mary’s feet and two fingers missing from her right hand. She looks fragile, but the other at the pulpit looks more like a harlot. Jimi Hendrix would enjoy

Everything, Poetry

THE CRITERIA BY WHICH MY MOTHER SELECTS A FATHER FOR HER CHILD | Nicole Lourette

He has to be a white man, under six feet mid-forties intelligent a George Clooney chin

Everything, Poetry

ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE (EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY) |Michael Prihoda

it’s natural to be afraid, watching the birth and death of the day. this is your catastrophe and the cure,

Everything, Poetry

DARKEST HOURS (FOX AND THE BIRD) | Michael Prihoda

when i was young and heading east these ashes weren’t counterfeit. we avoided

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UNTITLED | Sarah Francois

white powder runs down his nose his laugh is ragged

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SEA SHELLS | Sarah Francois

Ze sold sea shells by the sea shore no not really Ze sold sex by the pier It was amusing the look on people’s faces The deadpan expression to the straightforward question

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Bits | Neobie Gonzalez

In my dream I carry a mason jar filled with bits of Einstein’s brain (stolen before the rest of him was ashes), pieces they still haven’t found. I run up the stony steps of Gaudi’s basilica in Barcelona (built 1882 and finished never). Spires high, bricks laid, most of it a skeleton of becoming. Some […]

Everything, Poetry

Dorothy Faces the Tornado | Meggie Royer

He called her bruja so she prayed day in and day out over hemlock and wart of toad that he would let her leave. Braided ribbons of thorn into her hair in lieu of satin. At night it purled and crawled

Everything, Poetry

LYING NEXT TO SOMEONE YOU DON’T LOVE. | Elizabeth Tobin

The water is next to the bed. I am having those dreams where I am awake again. Whispering take your fingers away in sleepy protest moans.

Everything, Poetry

ALMOST HEAVEN | Elizabeth Tobin

The asphalt of summer stood still. Swum the deep end of mother’s disease and dreamed of dangling from telephone wires, calling the world to watch from under the table.

Everything, Poetry

Losing Teeth | Elizabeth Tobin

Swimming in between stubborn kindergarten gums, my mouth is full of blood. We pull up to that blue house while the kitchen curtain is on fire.

Everything, Poetry

FOR THE AVERAGE MELIPHONA BEE | Inara Lalani

I speak the language of a vanilla-flavoured day. Just beige pastels, and an ordinary tint of a café-au-lait. I have spent a lifetime crawling over a blanket of shells, just to coat my bones in the achromatic pain of synonymity so that my crescendo of affliction remains unheard,

Everything, Poetry

AN AQUARIUM FOR THE DEAD| Inara Lalani

I have this theory, That for six days, I could maybe keep a goldfish alive long enough so that I could see you again. On day one, I would watch the salesman pull it out from its home, and tuck it into a bag filled with more air than water.

Everything, Poetry

Fluid | Sarah Pinkerton

I am valued only in triptych, in tandem with someone and the services I can provide. Rolling out like the underfoot mat I so often am, belly up or arse in the air, I aim to be agreeable and end up flat on my back, fucked like a newlywed. Not enjoying it,

Everything, Poetry

the last time i tried to kill myself and was too ashamed to tell my therapist | Abigail Staub

Editor’s note: trigger warnings for sexual assault, suicide a college student asked me if it was true that i’d fuck him for booze; he said he knew how i liked it,

Everything, Poetry

2 poems| J.L. Harlow

Drifting Away Numb, and I cannot use this hidden shade of blue, Evening and the noise is everything but music, Mother is screaming, and I do not live for the bible, Mother is screaming, because I do not live for the bible,

Everything, Poetry

Blackness: A poem and identity in parts | Elizabeth Mudenyo

I. I used to deny it Pretend I didn’t see it And now I devour every bit of blackness I lick my fingers clean

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Honey & Asking For It| Meggie Royer

Editor’s note: I’ve decided to group these two poems because they respond well to each other. Be aware that there seems to be a theme of sexual assault/abuse. Honey Honey let us take you home tonight so we can rob you of your arms and then put them on again backwards so you’ll always remember […]

Everything, Poetry

She Has Found Religion At The Gym | Marnie Bullock Dresser

The girl next to me strains as though she’s on a quest, not an elliptical. Constant sweat, an occasional groan. She keeps murmuring, “Oh God. Oh God.”

Everything, Poetry

Clementine | Laura Mayron

“We’re going to be man slayers,” you told me, fox eyes glimmering. We were nine, on the playground. I knew you would be, with your sharp, fast grin and trickster ways. Already you were revolutionary. You moved through the woods like a sprite daring and limber among the sweet-smelling eucalyptus as we searched for fairies […]

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2 poems | Johannes Punkt

Inner Thighs sext: I hesitate to use the word beautifully to describe the way you open yourself like a coral-reef in bloom to me, but I’m prismatic too; I fuck you like an oil spill.

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Sex Scene | Kelsi Villarreal

While the show swells forward through its scenes— the windfall of sex, and the sudden twist ending where all good fortune is reversed—

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Eden | Grayson Herrgott

Sometimes I sit and stare at the coils of the bunk above me tracing their weaving pattern as if they were some sort of pathetic man-made constellation. And I think of all the ridiculous ways I compare you to others.

Everything, Poetry

What I Imagine You Taste Like in Bed | Lora Mathis

Like all of your ex-girlfriends swirled into one The Hippie becoming the Shaking Limbed The Almost But It Never Happened becoming the Fantasy Like your mother offering you a tangerine

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Wondering | J.C.

My first crush was in love with Patrick Dempsey. So I used to watch Grey’s Anatomy so I’d have something to talk to her about.

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An Almost Woman | Emily Nash

There are thousands of poems by women who were misunderstood with fears of either becoming an old maid, or of marriage.

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Elegie of a Diaspora | Ally Ang

Love, unfold yourself like a flower unto spring. Let the sun cradle you when you ache for your mother’s arms. Do not weep when you trace your bloodlines but find only an empty picture frame hanging in your grandmother’s house.

Everything, Poetry

It must have got lost in the mail | Susannah Betts

The sweatshirt still smells musty at the third wash and my thong still in the corner of the laundromat floor where I left it. Does spandex decompose? I didn’t like the look of someone else’s blue detergent on my red so I couldn’t own the thong after I saw it. Thongs don’t get adopted though […]

Everything, Poetry

—moLt ShEd | Rebecca Y. Lee

Most mornings, I wake and imagine myself lizard— nails running over rust-gray puckerings, peeling centuries blood into dust when the old skin wears too ancient I never know if I’ll emerge— sloughed-off history showing soft new smooth, breathing fresh or when my mask will slip—reveal monster underneath: past deeds etched deep within each canyon crinkle If I […]

Everything, Poetry

3 Poems | Andrew Wetmore

Cancer We laid on our backs and pulled shapes from the sky like reading the letters out of porno magazines. You had all your vaccinations and went to Sunday school every Sunday. You memorized your catechism and realized you were witnessing an execution When I walk down the street widows throw signs warding against the […]