POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
I suffer visions and many indignities
while looking for the Lobster
We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…
If America is Babylon / and you are an exile / newly arrived among pagans / Catholic, ‘Ngolan, Black, woman / you already know how to pray
my friends’ fathers are
dropping
I mean dying
like flies
anger, like you can sink teeth into, candy apple
You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
Dylan Krieger’s poetry is unflinching, grotesque, and beautiful. Her work tackles trauma, wrestles authority, and is a decadent sonic feast.
love is a soggy tea stain on a grocery receipt
He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.
The poetry of Brian S. Ellis unravels, inverts, investigates, and complicates. His poems are radical koans and invitations to forego common narratives.
You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet
my father holds
his favorite drink
Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.
Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors
a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.
I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.
In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
I count my homes—
those of my scattered youth
the sanctuary of our young family
the intermittent rest stops
of apartments and vacations.