UNCLE RUDI —after Gerhard Richter, 1965 Based on a family snap the artist’s uncle stands a warrior posed in grand regalia, facing the camera head on, two columns of buttons front his winter coat with smeared eagles and almost invisible lightning bolts on the collar and epaulets, a swastika perched on his cap. Smiling like …
Poetry: “Gitmo Orange” by Christopher Barnes
Day 1: Kurt Cobain’s bore held with essence-snarling potion. Day 2: Funnel-tubed by diagnosticians, Bound-to- happen morgue rattle an inexhaustible threat. Day 3: Overhanging suffocation in firm plastic hood. Day 4: In sea thirst Guerrilla dogs racket. Day 5: Oblivion dithers, clocks refuse to tick. Christopher Barnes’ first collection LOVEBITES is published by Chanticleer. Each …
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Poetry: “The World Until Yesterday” by Will Walker
For my father You keep him alive with longing and regret, memory a patient spider lashing someone once living to that yesterday when his story stopped and you became one of those spirits divorced from morning sun, riding an iceberg calved from the land, looking shoreward at dusk. But all the metaphors …
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Poetry: “The Whole Sky Rises Up” by Linda Swanberg
one winter alone in your little cabin you worked meticulously on model ships fingers looped thread after thread—tied tiny knots made sails: red silk sails blue sails the color of cornflower stiff white sails cut from a sheet, glued, and dried from each deck you positioned cannons— stealth down to the least detail …
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Poetry: “Undergraduates” by Dan Jacoby
lost one night in st. louis down from chicago drinking wine with brakemen, nuns, whores auditioning farm girls haunting rogers hall for a fox double scotch rocks grosse point boy sneered an echo at love looking through the hole he put in his own head in 1967 we were electric a double feature in the …
Poetry: “Civilization and its Discontents” by Martin H. Levinson
I bite my lips, pinch my thighs, pray I don’t pound you into the ground or chuck myself off the twenty-second floor terrace we are standing on as your sip your Singapore Sling, munch on a pretzel, pontificate over climate change, feminism, the lack of civility in American society and your aching feet that …
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Poetry: “Empty Vessel” by Eugenie Theall
Your cracked knuckles will never heal; they know the grip of the hammer too well. Yet you’ve stopped to cradle the hot cup of coffee I brought. The woman you married thirty-five years ago will not return, will not sing again, although she washes your thermos, watches us from the kitchen window. Shall I fill …
Poetry: “First Word” by Gavin Corey
My parents tell me I was some months old when My first word ticked out: “Clock.” Since then, Two faces Glare back at me In the mirror.
Poetry: “Pigeons” by Gavin Corey
Under sleepy awnings and overpasses, Pigeons huddle in groups of grays and blacks. Some bob over gum-stained slabs Shot white with shit. All good cities Are bad cities.
Poetry: “Of the Storm (Sleepless Eye)” by Adele Wegner
Adele Wegner was born in Youngstown, Ohio and lives in Chicago. She is a writer and artist and works in the field of psychology and mental health. Her poems have been published in Columbia Poetry Review and Burningword.
