Poetry – Page 5 – VAGABOND CITY

A Jinx, A Curse, A Broken Charm by Kiyanna Hill

I’ve always known too much, bornadherent I entered the world with a shavingof my mother’s hippocampus curvingagainst my palm. I urge / I warn / I caution:it’s dying, it’s gasping for water.This is a family of burdened women. These bodies won’t make it to 30. This is the beginning of genealogy, of lineage, of a door with a […]

Everything, Issue 74, Poetry

Seas are Rising and You Texted Me the Sweetest Thing by Grace Celi

The sun was warm and terrible—too strong for mid-March.I basked in it anyway, enamored with the way it hit your clavicleand just below. Daffodils sprungup around us—I did not mention their prematurity, but plucked oneand tucked it gently in the lipof your jeans with eager fingers. You kissed me, lips hot and wetas the air. […]

Everything, Issue 74, Poetry

pareidolia in the form of a lamprey by Liam Strong

hypothesis: ur seeing moons in the face of the moon. yeah every nite is full w/ ur moon in the face of another man. oh he the Dreamworks logo. he hooked. he dipping his toes into ur ribs. in the morning ur blanket is a milky cloud. a rabbit humping another rabbit. ur toes scare […]

Everything, Issue 74, Poetry

What I Learned of Poetry Through Swimming by Javeria Hasnain

Every poem is a bodyof water. It will ferryyou across your fear. Javeria Hasnain is an incoming MFA student at The New School on a Fulbright scholarship. Sheis a Pakistani poet whose work can be found in AAWW’s The Margins, Gutter magazine,Superstition Review, Stone, and elsewhere.

Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

The Boy and I by Noelle McManus

The boy and I make nicebecause there’s too much sufferingand send messages through the flight patternsof migratory birdsand when his answers cawat my window I open it upand cut cloacas in my breaststo let thefat outand I tell him “I’ll get you your surgery somedayI promise”and he says “black feathers blue feathers south.” Noelle McManus […]

Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

My ex gets most of the things in our separation by Suzy

(a poem made from my 2006 myspace blog post) Suzy is a writer from Arizona. She lives in Seattle. Her work is published in Rejection Letters, South Dakota Review, Variant Lit, Monkeybicycle, and others. She’s a recent graduate of Lindenwood University’s MFA program. She’s on Twitter @suzyeynon

Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

Self-Portrait as a 21st-Century Monody by Grace Marie Liu

I have forgotten how to sing.At CVS, I impulse buy two bottlesof cherry syrup. Ten percent off,I tell my mother, who shrieksMy god, how sick are you,by which she meanshow dead have you become.The only thing I rememberfrom biology is how to checkif something is alive.I should poke this poem withthe Big Dipper’s handleand watch […]

Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

Long Distance Dating as Told by Dreams and Special Relativity by Casey Reiland

I dream of Einstein and lightning describe the splintered tree to you over text how I saw the blitz coming before anyone else You write to me about space about time that gravity affects how the days slip away like a whale pulling […]

Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

I come out to my mother – at long last. by Julia Gaskill

once I was a fawn dipped in holy water.the forest my haven. the trees my family.the flowers my communion. the mist myprayer circle. the creek my rosary. the leaves whispering a promise of heaven. but only if I grew to be the kind of doe the forest wanted. all speckled with beguile and tame and meek. the kind who […]

Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

35mm by Em Norton

35mm the next time i take you to my parents’ house it’s better we leave the catholics out of it and i am at least three quarters of a person mom cooks & cooks hot chicken wings & honey garlic my sister’s favourite a […]

Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

Elegy @ Coney Island by Nancy Huang

Nancy Huang grew up in America and China. She is a Sewanee, VONA, Tin House, Watering Hole, and Pink Door fellow. Her debut poetry collection, Favorite Daughter, is out by Write Bloody Publishing. Her poetry, plays, and prose are published by The Offing, Cosmonauts Avenue, poets.org, The Margins, and film distribution company A24. She has […]

Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

dwelling on what the doctor will find ;; a picture of sunset by j.t. andrews

& the other night you held a tree outside my apartment & you said it was perhaps the most huggable tree ever & my phone said it was an apple tree but i didn’t see any apples & tonight i am holding the same tree & it really is a good tree & it is […]

Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

Restriction by Katey Linskey

Birds dive for fish, backdropped by pinkhaze. I watch them disregard breaking wavesand sink shamelessly for what they want. Watermelon, two eggs, five dates. I runmy daily list of what I ate. A net negative,I decide. I roll over onto my stomach, eye-level with the sand. Crabs dartbetween holes. So tentative, they scareat the tapping […]

Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

i thought about you again by Eli Shaw

yesterday, while lugging a box up the stairsto my new apartment, lungs aching in thestink of a hundred cracked and rotting pears soupy with august under their mother, green and sweetness-heavy. it once would’ve conjuredan image of us, older, in a perfect little domesticcountryside life somewhere, called to mind the songs about dizzying and soft love i collected […]

Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

In Which I Mourn The Years I Lost by Dhwanee Goyal

I. My eyes have eyes and their eyes follow me everywhere. My shadow has a shadow, no matter how small and green. I have never been afraid to slip into the crowd inside a crowd, lose myself in between the teeming rush of people’s coats. To teeter on the edge of a platform to a platform just to feel the […]

Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

second puberty by Eli Shaw

i smelled jasmine today – cut my lungs wide open. and yesterday, i swear, it was fresh pears on the tree outside my windowmonths too soon. i thought of the way they filled the basketon my bicycle as it leanedagainst the stairs. deflated tires and theache of uneaten fruit. i don’t know where i’ll be when they come again […]

Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

MRI Arcade by Eunice Lee

●●●● preposterous ●●●● how intense grief ●●●● reminds you of ●●●● games it is not: ●● pac-man, ●●● galaga, ●●●● major havoc ●●●● embarrassing ●●●● there is a face ●●●● to which grief cleaves: ● mouth, ● blip, ● gulf, ● whir, ●●●● inaccurate ●●●● the glitching face ●●●● I fight to piece: ● zip, ● clasp, ● jolt, ● wrench, ● twine, ●●●●●●●●●● shouldn’t have opened my windows to you ●●●●●●●●●● should’ve known pain pooled is more […]

Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

Longing: A Gay Science by Mahalia Sobhani

Mahalia Sobhani (she/her) is a barista and social work student in southeastern Wisconsin. She is the oldest of ten and has a Pisces moon, which explains a lot. Her work can also be found in Catatonic Daughters and the Oakland Arts Review as well as the forthcoming Bonemilk anthology from Gutslut Press. You can find […]

Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

Tehillim 96 by Miriam Saperstein

Miriam Saperstein is an artist, ritual-crafter and logistics maven based in Detroit, and soonmoving to Philly. Their writing and art have appeared in ctrl + v, Jewish Currents, thelickety~split, Pollux Journal, New Voices Magazine, and PROTOCOLS. You can find theirzines at miriamsaperstein.gumroad.com.

Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

concentration, 64 by Kristine Ma

no repeats or hesitation.i go first, ‘cause you’re the worst. category is: taste. in my dreams, you taste like stale lemon drops.overripe blueberries splitting down chin, tension wrought between us like a knifeslicing into the flesh of a peach. i cradle the pitin my cheek. dalgona kind of lethargic,seaweed-around-rice kind of unraveling, and so […]

Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

Heat Seeking by Britt DiBartolo

Britt DiBartolo is a poet living in western North Carolina. She recently graduated with herMaster’s in English literature from the University of Tennessee and now teaches research andwriting to high schoolers. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in the Rising Phoenix Review,Pigeon Parade Quarterly, and elsewhere. She’s @frangipansy on Instagram.

Everything, Issue 69, Poetry

sadcore & sleepless by Michael Russell

pause obsess rewind porn star Calvin Bankskneeling leaning back his hips bounce like a buoycaught in a tidal waveof cock muscle curls oh Calvinwhen you study your reflection do you worship the striationsin your chest? absthat cut & pushthrough the amniotic sac of your […]

Everything, Issue 69, Poetry

Who Calls Anyone Anymore? by Angelica Whitehorne

I’m just calling you to ask if you have ever scrunchedthe skin under your eyes and made wrinkles in the mirror and felt like you were seeing time? And when you let your eye skinfall back into place, was it like reversing time, like time travel, like being close to The impossible? I’m leaving you […]

Everything, Issue 69, Poetry

history of the body by Sophie Choong

wai po falls sick in penang. through her cracked lips she still calls it pulau pinang,a palate bad-breathed, wu wei-harmonied to her language, the estuaries she carries in the seat of her spine pulau for island, for mooned blisters, volcano soresthere is a rhythm to dying bodies. when she bleeds, each scab sculpts a fragile […]

Everything, Issue 69, Poetry

High Summer by Hua Xi

In high summer, I see lovemost clearly when I’m alone. “Shouldn’t a poet be more romantic?”someone asks me. I ask my heartif it ever thinks of me. This morning, I had breakfast by myselfat the hotel and listened to the lobby pianist. Tourists arrive early to Black Tortoise Park andI thought I saw a couple […]

Everything, Issue 68, Poetry

Touching by Rachel Tanaka

I let my fingers lie on my bodylike my fingers are a sack of wooden stamps: delicate and foreign and someone else’s.I let my body lie under my fingers like my body is a field of tidepools:jagged, and damp, and a home to many things. I do this over and over: each objectbecoming another object. […]

Everything, Issue 68, Poetry

to tell you the truth, i must unswallow my tongue by BEE LB

a pattern emerging not of need but desperation. nothing new, not even unknown. we dig up the truths just to bury them again. we endure the pain of looking until we have to look away. the pain of staying until we have to go. of being gone until we must return. endless, these cycles, these […]

Everything, Issue 68, Poetry

begging by Tanya Azari

it’s 2019 so my New Year’s resolution is to only makedecisions on my period. in March it comes hard and fast, twice. all the bills still get paid, the countertopswiped down. i started eating again and now i can’t seem to rid myself of this hunger. i’ve decided i don’t want my life to be […]

Everything, Issue 68, Poetry

Flood by Khushi Jain

You remind me ofScene from the Great Flood (1826) by Joseph-Désiré CourtFour pairs of handsTerrified, alarmed, hystericalClutching, gasping, yearning No, not youI remind me of this paintingIn your presenceI become the hands Khushi holds a Bachelors in English literature from the University of Delhi, India, and iscurrently pursuing a Masters in Classics from Trinity College, […]

Everything, issue 67, Poetry

EMILY AS IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S GOING TO RAIN TODAY by Darren C. Demaree

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 […]

Everything, issue 67, Poetry

To the girl crying silently on the other end of the seat of the Uberpool we are in by Aditi Bhattacharjee

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 […]

Everything, issue 67, Poetry

Sonnet Against Capitalism by Timothy Otte

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 […]

Everything, issue 67, Poetry

Among the Minerals by Emily Wolahan

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.

Everything, Issue 66, Poetry

The Cannibals by Sarah Haeckel

I was abducted by cannibalsLast night in my dreamsThey didn’t eat me, per se, but after I had aMore holistic understanding of cannibalismIn my own damn kitchenSomeone made a joke about Armie HammerAnd I told them offSaid these are real people’s lives.It’s nice to feel like you know where the real people areOn my left […]

Everything, Issue 66, Poetry

Aubade with Fangs by Maddy Rane