UChicago's Oldest Literary Magazine
Really, the old guy impersonated
himself, the rolling eye and teeth-bared grimace
straight out of silent movies. He’d known
vaudeville too, and, in the old sense,
burlesque. Gestures from Yiddish theater—
The unnamed narrator coats the stones like rain. He says: There is logos inside the logo, logic in the log, but watch the long-sleeved willow in autumn as it sways: willow, hold your suede over the colossus of loss, your shadow strides the forest seeking seeking. He says: Where the blackbirds fire songs a story […]
Read More Poetry: “Story,” by Giles Goodlandyou think of hot evenings watching cottontails scatter
at the yip of waking coyotes
you think of watching clouds of heat lightning
glimmer like pearly gates
you think of baseball fishing in the pond
Startled awake, I left my frayed brain
resting in its head-case as I floated away
up to the ceiling, out of the long window
into the northern hardy redbud just outside
beginning its flower, tight pink nodules
In Newark, spring opens its mouth, yawns
across the Manhattan skyline, like a promise.
Yesterday, I asked what love was beyond
laughter skipping on broken vinyls, hands
on the steering wheel, beyond umbrellas. I
a broken arrowhead—its tip
cut off—depressed beneath the clay
five hundred years emerges after
summer’s heavy rain—I rinse
it in the basin carved in limestone
Steve is comforted by the fact that humans are top of the food-chain.
His sister Keri’s greatest wish is for some cute guy
to stand beneath her window and sing Harry Styles songs to her.
If it’s the actual Harry Styles, so much the better.
To their mother, Harriet, everything is a matter of life and death.
Jesus had it going on for a good couple of years,
like Billy Collins—followers who said mmm when
he hit them with a perfect image, event attendees
who snapped their fingers and played bongos,
who caught him up when he took the leap of faith,
Read More Poetry: “Coming Up Jesus,” by Jeff McRae& the robins are back dozens of them in the park but that spring, our first in this house, when I brought the baby back from (no matter what you think) a difficult morning at the park & our cats, who were new to the feral outdoors, had hunted like cougars amongst what I assume were birds unsuspecting […]
Read More Poetry: “SO IT’S SPRING” by Jacqueline Hughes Simon{As in, ongoing / fluxing;As in, computing and hold please and etcetera; As in, wait 600 minutes, and the anchor we never dropped, and how carefully can a person jump out of a plane; As in, whatever you thought you saw, stand over here this time—think again / shift / mend; As in, what didn’t […]
Read More Poetry: “PROCESSING” by Amanda Russell
Euphony Journal 