-
“God, what a shame / to die so young. Soon after, the rain came. / Fat, angry drops began to pelt and sting / my skin.”
-
A few months ago, I was lucky enough to spend three blissful days reading, writing, walking, jogging, eating, and mostly gabbing for hours with four amazing women. (Before this weekend,...
-
“I am running away / from my new home, / past the blue green / chlorine pool where / the big kids play. Away / from the rat faced girl...
-
“Her dress is white, scored with black squares. / There is matter in the pattern. / The pattern matters—”
-
“But if our strengths are measured / with a gaze, observe the statues / our beholders will become, /
wide-eyed and petrified . . .”
-
“I heard the angels’ joyous song / An ancient temple’s brassy gong / Bagpipes, trombones sang along / When she prayed”
-
“I used to stand with him / among the budding clover. / I was King of the Park / and the young prince / rode my shoulders.”
-
In honor of national poetry month (hooray for April!), we will be featuring a poetry book review once a week. This week’s pick: Her Side of It, by Marilyn Bushman-Carlton.
-
“The rectangles and squares of adobe houses / bake under blazing heat. The perpendicular / lines of crucifixes are etched with names / lost and ignored . . .”
-
“I started writing poetry before I had kids and was struggling with infertility. [ . . . ] Poetry became increasingly important as I grappled with the strong emotions of...
-
“There is a certain peace / to feel your feet planted / in the place where they will stop / the hop skip jump of life . . . “
-
“She stood short of the ford, / dainty footed, silken kimono / splashed red against the mud and autumn dun.”
-
“Twelve Irishmen scream / from gastrointestinal pain, / thrash splintered guitars, / race headlong down dark stairs . . .”
-
“Tonight, in this chair / you bow your head / as if being crowned, / the tiara of my fingers / settling on your hair.”
-
“And would I not feel diminished / a little, were that plant to die? ~ / just as I sense concern to see / the leaves on three or four...
-
“o quiet indweller / can we ever / know if you / be more / than skull-locked?”
-
“Smoldering and cold, my little cigarette, / empty and old, my little smoke stick.”
-
Do you know who the current Poet Laureate of Utah is? Watch this video!
-
“Cloudy, he recalls / his late night study of it, in the liquid / too liquid there were little jelly clumps / like the half-dried hair gel that clung to...
-
“We are not furred like dogs / or feathered like ducks, no / rows of scales clog our touch / like tree bark . . . “
-
“Plucked and torn / and capped in thorn / that sprig was hung / from cross bar slung / with ache of nails.”
-
“I believe / you put the compass in me, / you are the needle / that directs us on the / path to godhood; . . . “
-
“Miles away my lips / taste the prophet’s skin / moist with salt . . . “
-
“At the flea market today I called You Lord of the Fleas / and my lover laughed . . . “
-
“If I were permitted selfishness, I’d ask God to / catch a ram inside a thicket, send an angel down / to smite the chains that bind my will.”
-
“the sun dresses the tattered clouds / in fire and gold . . .”
-
“Sometimes I fear a body knows when it’s dying / and relays urgency to the brain / to make a flourish of praise . . .”
-
“I’ve practiced this before, like hard dough rolled / in sugar: how we sweeten survival.”
-
” . . . bringing sick, / terrible knowledge and that grey uncertainty / of the world at an end—how it could come / when nobody realizes nobody hears...
-
” . . . seconds when we believed our little thoughts / were stars pricking through a black canopy. / Stars we thought we could sail by to some new...
-
“The doctrine is an egg / in its shell / I can’t swallow / God . . . “
-
“He is walking home from the church in our skulls / knocking the halo from his head . . .”
-
“A wickedness presses / in my breast. I cannot / pluck it out. It is a rolled up / Torah scroll I cannot read.”
-
“It’s weird how we erode. / In the valleys, shed pieces of me / fell from busy fingertips and mingled / with cracker crumbs, bacon bits, / stranded grains of...
-
“She called me at 11:00 on / Saturday night and asked if / I could have sex with her.”
-
Angela Felsted is a musician, poet, and nature lover. Her work has appeared in issue fifteen of Drown in Your Own Fears, in Chantarelle’s Notebook, and on her blog.
-
By the relish apparent in the eyes of patrons at Bottega’s pearl café, I expect to see, barely in disguise, a celebrity alight this bright day. . .
-
“he likes to say that our heavenly mother is so sacred we shouldn’t even talk about her . . .”
-
“You hope these ghosts / know how to respect your privacy.”
-
“If we had carved / that jack o’lantern, / it would have been / pudding . . .”
-
“his love slashing / a cross-hatch in my / heart . . .”
-
“I lay down in my bed, nobody / beside me tonight because / I have the boy.”
-
” . . . I imagined [God's pew] empty, imagined him out fishing the Snake,
waves lapping at his waders like a dog left alone all day . . . “
-
“I’d thought bamboo / was a symbol of peace, but my young / cousins proved me wrong . . .”
-
“You’ve kissed a / wolf before; his black lips curled . . .”
-
M. Brett Gaffney graduated with a BA in English from Stephen F. Austin University and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
-
Christine Butterworth-McDermott is an associate professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she teaches creative writing, fairy tales, and act as the poetry editor of REAL: Regarding...
-
Christine Butterworth-McDermott is an associate professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she teaches creative writing, fairy tales, and act as the poetry editor of REAL: Regarding...
-
For women, this isn’t allowed. If I were my brother, no one would notice. I’m breaking the rules
-
My fingers glide across your nape, shoulders and waist. . .
