Harpy Hybrid Review

A Journal of Hybrid Literature and Art

Harpy Hybrid Review

Archive
issues

Issue #6: Myth

Cover Art by Elena Valdés Chavarría

Contributors: Precious Uwen, Karla Van Vliet, Lorelei Bacht, Maya Alexandria, Jake Kendall, Edward Michael Supranowicz, Ayokunle Falomo, Moses Ojo, Guillermo Rebollo Gil, Z. D. Dicks, Sarah Ozanne, Jane Orange, Lathalia Song, Bojan Đurđević, Howie Good, Lisa Periale Martin, Natalie Korman, Jason M. Marak, Wren Donovan, Mike Sikkema, Matthew McGuirk, Carrie Elizabeth Penrod, Jay Gandhi, Michele Worthington, Linda M. Crate, Agata Maslowska, Hannah Landsberger, Elyssa Tappero, Kendra Preston Leonard, Tara Campbell, Charles K. Carter, Edward Lee, John Yohe, Anne Leigh Parrish, and Jacqueline Doyle.

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Art

by Karla Van Vliet

In the spaces between silence and the word there is asemic writing, that for me bridges the distance. …

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In his little boat, the boatman

by Lorelei Bacht

Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin.

I don’t know what it means, that I
should sit so sad before the trembling…

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Activating Healing (Visual Art)

by Maya Alexandria

What was your process for creating this piece?

I usually focus on a singular idea or theme and then choose a corresponding crystal to help amplify the piece. For this painting, I wanted to focus on masculine healing. I chose David as the subject because he is an easily recognizable masculine subject for most audiences.

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Saturn Devouring His Sons

by Jake Kendall

TW: Violence

I kept a long knife and a torch at my bedside as I waited breathlessly for him in the dark…

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Paintings

by Edward Michael Supranowicz

Titles: The Cruelty of Fate, Almost Out of the Picture, and A Box of Armageddon.

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AUTOBIOMYTHOGRAPHY

by Ayokunle Falomo

In the beginning, there was a garden.
And then, a fire. Except it was no fire.
But what to say of the furnace that was
my mother’s womb…

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KÜNSTLERROMAN

by Ayokunle Falomo

I must’ve desired to be a poet
the first time I heard my mother

speak. Of course, that’s not
the truth, but let’s say it is…

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Art

by Moses Ojo

Titles: Locked in the picture, African woman, Resilience, and Father’s love.

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The snow on the roof of the house

by Guillermo Rebollo Gil

Chris Benoit vs. Raven
[WCW Thunder, 2/12/98]

Raven dressed like a grunge musician.
He would quote Edgar Allan Poe.
Benoit committed suicide in 2007…

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The World Tree

by Z. D. Dicks

(Odin recounts his hanging)

In the great gap was the tree
before I was blinded
it was firmly planted
and I laid my noose taught…

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The Screamer Awakens

by Z. D. Dicks

He/She led in nothingness
polyglot of potential tones
all words carried in scream…

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Wolf Mother

by Z. D. Dicks

She loosed a death rattle
raking up from mask ribs
a wide echo circle
cavernous as a vowel…

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Flywaterleaflight Series

by Lathalia Song

i flew in my dreams through
a cave of tears
in oceans of tears
the tear tries to change its shape
sharpens itself…

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In the middle between

by Bojan Đurđević

Let me draw the middle for you
There’s my family
Which has a captured appearance
Trapped they live in mold walls…

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On the other side

by Bojan Đurđević

There on the other side
There is a cemetery of lost souls
The sailors covered by the sea…

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That day

by Bojan Đurđević

Sometimes that day shows up
When nothing happens
Not even the wind vibrates…

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4 Prose Poems

by Howie Good

Titles: Truth Is the God of Last Resort, Saturday Matinee, Drone Pilots Do It Remotely, and Sick, Sick, Sick.

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Don’t look back

by Lisa Periale Martin

Grainy black and white
TV screen on a rare night, everyone
asleep but me, Orpheus
and Eurydice, set in a favela…

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In the Dream

by Natalie Korman

Everything seems whole and completely formed. Like a Hollywood movie, you don’t know what they leave out. It looks like it’s all there on the screen…

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Someone Is Waiting

by Natalie Korman

The way he asked me to come over makes me think he has waited. I think I saw him looking at me as I approached. He is in his pickup truck. It felt like I was being inconvenienced, forced to walk over…

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From ‘Fictional Space’

by Jason M. Marak

Tree knows her nature. She finds the forest unbearable. She doesn’t dislike her tree-ness. She casts an impressive shadow. She’s happy with her foliage. But immobility gets her down…

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(SAVE US FROM) ETERNAL JUNE

by Wren Donovan

Deadfall chestnuts idiotically signal the arrival, come June, of the messiah. Wood-grainy voices of old acorns and walnuts combine to roar imminent salvation. Black oak, crabapple-blossom, ironweed and sweetgum, angel cap of death and rambling roses…

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In the Beginning (Photography Series)

by Mike Sikkema

What was your process for creating this work?

I take daily walks with my small daughter around the parks, preserves, and green areas where I live, and many of these places are watery in one form or another. I look for charged areas of reflection…

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The Bogdragger

by Matthew McGuirk

“I thought they only dragged bogs when they needed to find somethin.” My mind began burstin like some of those pop rocks we always get on the fourth of July.

My brother leaned in, his friend Slingshot twistin a long strand of brown hair. “Not drag the bog, the bogdragger.”

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Hide and Seek

by Carrie Elizabeth Penrod

Curly hair wild thing hides in the raspberry bushes, hands clasped
over mouth to hide snickers as the crow circles above…

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Hidden Denial

by Jay Gandhi

I watch my mother
washing clothes
in the cramped bathroom.

She often sits in the balcony
waiting for her mother
(draped in a sky blue cotton sari)…

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After the Miscarriage

by Linda M. Crate

TW: suicide ideation

i understand demeter’s pain,
of making the world cold
and frigid as she felt
with the loss of her daughter…

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Baba Yaga

by Agata Maslowska

They say the devil slept in your daughter’s womb…

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The Body Myth – Prometheus

by Hannah Landsberger

God became the first surgeon when he carved into Adam’s chest to form Eve. Of course that’s why so many of us end up broken, I think as my doctor pushes my dislocated rib back into place…

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The Body Myth – Pandora

by Hannah Landsberger

Evil springs from the uterus, is a truth that gods and doctors can agree on. I see it in their faces each time one emerges from between my stirruped legs like the sun…

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Pandora’s Box, Ammit, and Medusa (Visual Art)

by Elyssa Tappero

These three pieces were all part of a zine I made called “Worship the Monstresses.” Each one belongs to a different piece of prose or poetry which inspired it.

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Cassandra at the Bonfire

by Kendra Preston Leonard

The snakes licked my ears.
I told you about the war.

They danced with me and whispered.
I told you about the horse.

I gave you the libations of the funeral,
and my brother gave you the food…

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In the City of Singing Bonfires

by Tara Campbell

Light flickers warm and orange on our faces. We walk from one blaze to another, from fire to fire. We walk and listen to the melody at the heart of each bonfire.

One fire sings the wind, rushing at various pitches and strengths, ebbing from frantic to mild, then back to tornado…

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The Singer

by Charles K. Carter

O Sappho, player of lyre,
raise up your voice to accompany the strings.
Share with us your untamed philosophy…

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The Creators

by Charles K. Carter

In 2019, the Westboro Baptist Church congregation protested outside of a Kansas theatre where lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge was performing.

“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”

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Digital Paintings

by Edward Lee

Titles: You, Revealed; Yesterday Refusing to Relinquish Today; Ever You and I; and The Kiss of Skin.

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Calypso

by John Yohe

the anger of a woman
who gives everything for a man
and asks nothing except he stay…

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Photography

by Anne Leigh Parrish

Titles: Seedhead on post, Sharing space, First Sunflower, Headland, Mussels on rock, and Shell on Oregon beach.

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Half Fish Tale, Half Ars Poetica

by Jacqueline Doyle

Horace warns us to eschew hybridity in writing, lest such unions give birth to freaks. Each genre “has its place allotted,” Horace advises in his Ars Poetica

Posted on

HHR Issue #5 Online Reading

Join us as we celebrate our launch of Issue #5: “Lost and Found” with readings and art presentations by C.Cimmone, Koss, Cole W. Williams, Shareen K. Murayama, Angela Dribben, Fred Gerhard, Kip Knott, Peter Mladinic, Jonce Palmer, and Tanvi Nagar.

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Surrender

by C.Cimmone

The baby is screaming. I turn to the kitchen window, hoping you are mowing the backyard, but all I see is overgrown green. …

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Erynie

by Lorelei Bacht

When you touched __________,
you commissioned me to bring
before your eyes the history
of “__________ and __________” …

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grief a study in grey

by Lorelei Bacht

where there should be an ache there is a blank a hollow square the texture of grey clouds I poke at it test its absence lack of substance…

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I Still Talk to You Two Years Later

Poetry and Photography by Koss

Someone online asked me how you died, then quickly vaporized. Protons and neutrons reverse direction and switch connections. We meet like ghosts; synapses trail our devices. …

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Pena y Perdida (Grief & Loss)

by Winston Plowes (Poetry & Film) and Alicia Fernandez (Voice)

No country is really sure
how many it has lost
and in Madrid, Spain is recounting its dead in the Ice Palace. …

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You Wake Up Early

by Nancy Himel

erased from This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangaremba

You decided to escape You vow / you will launch into my life ….

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Untitled I

by Cole W. Williams

the sound of one voice / slips from the strands of her hair / jounced by dust at the speed of sound …

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Beyond

Photography by Shareen K. Murayama

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Teeter-Totter

by Wilson Koewing

TW: violence, active shooter situation flashbacks, suicide ideation

Alison chose to move to Asheville, North Carolina and leave her corporate career behind…

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girl means bones that glow forever

by Angela Dribben

Run the brush fibers between your lips, girls
Get a fine point
Paint fine numbers on the clock dials
Our boys are fighting for you girls…

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House of India #90

by Glen Armstrong

I fear photography in that it is more than a suggestion. About a girl. About reality. About face and light. …

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Make Me Whir

by John Rodzvilla

Make me whir-r-r, whir-r-r, whir-r-r … !

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Sundown

by Fred Gerhard

Sun going down / almost still / moving / sentinel trees stand / feathery filament / testament …

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Prodigal

by Fred Gerhard

I think of Pennsylvania on days like this.
The arching sunsets over a bowl horizon…

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abuelo

by Gaby Benitez

imagino cada abuelo es mío
los que están tomando jugo de zanahoria con jengibre en la
panadería, the one at the house on the corner …

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Curious

by Sheree Shatsky

solitary / woman / striking the stars above …

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Recognize

by Sheree Shatsky

to this world

devote attention….

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S.O.S.

by Elyssa Tappero

the chiropractor says my ribs keep popping out and i wonder if that’s from my heart trying to break free…

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1338 Hearst Ave

by Christian Garduno

We used to walk down Shattuck
with the textbooks we couldn’t afford in their bookstores
we would make a left, down Bancroft Way
stop and share a smoke with a few friends along the way…

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Calculating Distances

by Kip Knott

Dear Jenny,

Today marks the 30th anniversary of our divorce. …

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Sunday

by Peter Mladinic

On a part of the army airbase that crosses
long air strips once used for planes, now
for gliders, I walked towards the prison…

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Blame

by Peter Mladinic

This was the 1950’s. I get sentimental
remembering Jake, a dachshund.
He had all the freedom. He was smart. …

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On a Park Bench

by David S. Anderson

My mother said she wished I would disappear.
Not die, because then she might carry it—
no, worse. She asked that I fade away…

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Am I the fool?

by Shiksha Dheda

Could I
be trying to be
more than what I am …

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Therapeutic Love

by Dr. Sarah Gundle

When we began our work, my patient was a full-time martial arts instructor. Something drove him to therapy. He wasn’t sure what. …

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Two Crows

by Sheldon Lee Compton

He planted plugs of zoysia grass last summer. Now that’s what all the yellow is about. Everywhere that’s yellow this morning…

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Only Mud and Grass

by Sheldon Lee Compton

A new couple who became pregnant by mistake. Neither of the two young parents wanted a child, so when the baby was born, they placed it in a remote location, a mud and grass hut some thirty yards from the main home. …

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Dear You, in March

by Avery Lane

Purple light backs the drummer, and from his left ear dangles a single feather, swinging wildly with each wallop of the snare. …

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In the Lobotomist’s Office

by Avery Lane

The voices of her mother and the doctor were all but muted.
Their words like minnow, silver and languid…

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Chrysalis

by Tanvi Nagar

I sat in a dimly lit room and began to flip the dusty journal’s pages…

issues

Issue #4: Storyteller

Contributors: Josh Steinbauer, Emily Ann Salles, Angelica Mejia, Rebecca Andem, Joy Alexander, Maurice Moore, George White, and Foster Trecost.

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Teeth

by Emily Ann Salles

My great-grandmother used to terrify us by taking her teeth out. With a flick of her lower jaw they’d pop out into a shark’s double smile. We would shriek. The youngest of us started to cry. She would chuckle and chomp them back into place.

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The Grey Area

by Angelica Mejia

Not having much of normal necessities in the kitchen had not phased me until my adult years. My parents did their best at raising us while my mom was fighting a battle none of us knew how to deal with or talk about. She hid it from me and my siblings for years—cancer.

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Remember Me

by Angelica Mejia

It was on the 9th of August the evening that my great-grandmother passed. It was the last week of monsoon season, the favorite season all Arizonans are familiar with. The weather podcast for the day was no chance of rain, but later on, when we knew she passed, it rained, and it rained hard.

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Evanescing

by Rebecca Andem

Fields that blossomed at dawn faded by dusk, as though a million blue butterflies had landed and lifted. And her mother, her mother fluttered on the thin edge of shadows.

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Another Morning After

by Rebecca Andem

As a rule, Jamie steered clear of Fat Tuesday. The MTV clones with their bedhead styles and tribal tattoos were bad enough sober. Tossing back Jell-O shots and moving in packs? No thank you. But three years in the Keys, and he was restless. He’d been through every waitress and barback from Key Largo to Key West.

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On the Bukhansan Mountain

by Joy Alexander

I was really not suicidal. But in that murderous instant, I was trapped. And the way, as I saw it, after long harried minutes of despair, was to just jump and end it all.

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Reflections In COVID Times

by Joy Alexander

There ought to be an asylum for such as me
harassed and haunted I am.

Thermometers blaze high temperatures of suffering COVID patients, while
I gripe at sunburn on my pampered potted plants.

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Transcript – Text – Roberta Williams – Blood Rituals and Monsters of the Postbellum

by Maurice Moore

Only one copy of Roberta William’s 2133 text “Blood Rituals and Monsters of the Postbellum” exists. It was recovered from the excavation site after her disappearance back in 2138. Reports state that Williams disappeared while doing further research on the Purpura Demon legend for her second book while on expedition at the Neuse River.

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Momma’s Song

by Maurice Moore

Roberta: -Knock, Knock-
Alfreda: Stop yo monster drawing Junior and get de door ya Momma still getting pretty fa de Doctor.

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The Urn

by George White

Honestly, Mark, picking you up today was nearly as bad as the funeral. Time for a brew now. I think I need a nice decaf tea. I might even treat myself and put some honey in it.

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The Bicycle Mechanic

by Foster Trecost

I came upon a young boy who sat upon the ground. At his side lay a blue Schwinn, lent from an earlier time. His hands were stained with grease from the chain, which had popped from the sprocket, and his shirt stained with grease from his hands. I watched for a moment, then knelt next to him.

issues

Issue #3

Cover photography by Brenna Wuillamey

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Multilingual Poems

by Garrett Gomez

crawled into a shell
this afternoon xcept

it was a cocoon…

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Weird Fishes

by Lucy E Allan

There are two types of water in the sea, and there are two sadnesses in the body.

The first sadness lives in the muscles between your ribs…

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The Rain After the Rain Is the Wind

by Suzanne S. Rancourt

This wind shoulder bumps stacked droplets. They tumble down branches / fall off cliff tips shining green with wet….

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Hunter

by Suzanne S. Rancourt

The bull waggled his rack tips while feeding on submerged water lilies and pondweed….

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Hannah and I

by Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani

Hannah and I, listening / to the cacophony of noon / while cocooned in this stillness / as the rest of the world / cycles on what is their norm….

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Maniac

by Brenna Wuillamey

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Digging for Lost Temples

by David Estingel

Thumbing through The Borderlands, I can’t help but feel not “brown” enough. I’m Mexican Lite. Got a case of the “coconuts”. There are no rageful battle-cries inflaming this breast. …

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How Hungry are the Children?

by Stephanie Powell

They chew with soft-jawed mouths open; molars loose in the gums.
It may be post-war steak, grey under kitchen lights…

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Scene (III) –

Poetry and photography by Stephanie Powell

This room as a picture, the Musician stands up, his lower groin occupies the space with the possessive masculinity of a Mapplethorpe. …

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My Wife and I: A Case Study

by Megha Nayar

Wife (Fully functional human being, veritable force of nature)

Me (Her troubled husband, hereafter referred to in third person)…

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Welcome Home

by Ken Tomaro

it has been awhile since I’ve been home
the cat barely recognizes me
but it didn’t take long for him to warm up
before he went back to licking himself…

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Haiku Hybrid

Poem by Silvia El Helo, photograph by Terrence Sykes

Ten slow sips…

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Misery Loves Company

by Jemelia Moseley

I am watching TV as the TV watches me
I see movement but I hear no sound
In my own head space, my own maze…

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I am more than my hair

by Jemelia Moseley

As a black child growing up in the 90’s they said I was lucky because my hair was long,
when I cut it they said my beauty was gone…

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Window Pane

Story by Mark Blickley, Photography by Beatrice Georgalidis

It was time for Ralph’s first real haircut. Ralph’s mother said it was time, as did the next-door parents of his best friend, Emmitt. The only person who did not think it was time for a real haircut was Ralph. He did not want to go to the barbershop. …

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Pronounce It Right!

by Hibah Shabkhez

I am a boiling pot of Englishes, bubbling frantically as they collide. …

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Burning Giraffes

by Dmitry Blizniuk, translated by Sergey Gerasimov

Sailing boats with bright sails —
lemony, orange, striped, —
flock by the shore,
dawdling at the water edge like burning giraffes…

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Poems.

by Mernine Ameris

my aunt’s 2nd wedding.
an august festival for some.
an all day marathon for those who know her.
a common cocktail for a haitian wedding.

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do not go short on prayer

by Perla Kantarjian

there is a bag of worn out peaches sitting
on my kitchen floor
that i cannot bear to devour nor to dispose of….

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Texas Pledge

by Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman

Can you see how the river shimmers? Connecting states
I pledge allegiance to
the farm to market roads
Connecting rivaling towns

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Bridges

by Rudolf Alexander

A new bridge is being built over the river in Carpentersville
that will connect Longmeadow Parkway on the west bank…

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Salem : Still of a Hometown

by Jacob Nantz

Stand at the south end of the square and face the courthouse. DANMAR FAMILY PHARMACY casts a shadow over the white-bricked building to its left.

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Weight We Carry

by Jacob Nantz

I grew up riding trains from the suburbs to the city, / then around the city, hovering on the EL…

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Aurora : Still of a Hometown

by Jacob Nantz

…Middle and working classes fill in from the edges and meet downtown in an uncommon harmony: filthy taverns, charming Irish Pubs, an aging casino, an old roundhouse-turned brewery…

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New Idea Manure Spreader

by Ronald Tobey

we bought an old used manure spreader
small holding 80 bushels
enough for one pass of 500 feet
faded red planks bolted to its steel frame
rust on metal…

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Bulletproof

by Howie Good

The relationship among spatially dislocated but simultaneous events is difficult for a lay person like me to fathom….

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Heart Sounds

by Howie Good

You unbutton the top few buttons of your blouse. The doctor places a cold stethoscope against your chest….

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Axe and You Shall Receive

by Howie Good

Because the horizon for humanity is so cold and sharp, the edge of an executioner’s axe, I try my best to stay up on the news, but today…

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Waiting Out Bombogenesis

by KG Newman

The lunatic let his pet mosquito out of a matchbox outside our quiet house / as freezing eventide strolled over to see what’s up.

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Harnessing Hypomania

by KG Newman

I tried brewing a placebo/antidote in the garage over bottomless beers and drifting solitude, / while you read the first chapter of every self-help book from the library.

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Flawed Superhero

by KG Newman

The morning Stan Lee died I put my son in his Spiderman shirt for day care, wondering / when he’d comprehend each late-night kitchen argument…

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Dear Love,

by Cole W. Williams

I draw tik marks on the page—
wanting to see what hundreds of thousands looks like…

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Diagnostic Error

by Maia Joy

Marble bust goes to the emergency room
complaining of chest pain, loss of sensation…

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A Thread

by Alyssa Jordan

He goes where you can’t follow, like all
the dead do. You wonder…

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Song of the Drowned

by Alyssa Jordan

You buy flowers
wondering where
she has gone. …

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Victory Lap

by Jennifer Shneiderman

Bees riot in swaying lush lavender rendering jealous wild pink bougainvillea undulating dancing…

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Let’s Cure Our Wounds

by Ahmad Al-khatat

We constantly question the things we do.
Living has become a harder question than death. …

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Unreadable Quartet

by Shoshana Olidort

after Paul Celan [UNLESBARKEIT]

Unreadable this, unreadability of this, illegibility of this, illegible this
world, world, world, world. …

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QUartET: the 4 temperaments

by Irina Moga
Art by Tatiana Arsénie

On some days the hazy, milk-white light draws me into a strange fluidity: it’s the wisdom of a wing-like, deceitful surface.

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Two Ekphrases with Translations

by Galina Itskovich
Translations by Valentin Emelin

The road is sad, saturated with poison,
And pricking with flat notes on my bare feet.
Impasto on canvas.

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Birding

by Cheryl Heineman
They are raven-like, dark-winged
moving toward a tangled nest
or like crows circling
seeking their own kind
against a fog-ivory sky the outline

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Wing Man

by Lisa Periale Martin

Wing man speaking
now he’s singing
layering images
coats curried
borrowed brush tips

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Han’s Solo

by Mark Blickley
Photography by Keith Goldstein

I’ve had this recurring Bridge Dream for nearly fifteen years. It first appeared one night after being exhausted by cram studying for my Bar Mitzvah. In this initial fantasy I was a swaddled infant left on the very beginning of a long and twisting walkway through a vibrant yet desolate forest.

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A Berlin Totem Pole

by Maroula Blades

On the 10th August 2020, I saw the totem pole out of the corner of my eye. I was travelling on the “Road to Sacrow” in Krampnitz. Krampnitz is a district of the state capital Potsdam (Brandenburg) in Germany. I asked the driver to halt the car. I had to take a photograph of this interesting object. There wasn’t a bronze plaque nailed on the painted bark. This artwork has no recorded history.

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de Ojos de Valparaiso / from Eyes of Valparaiso

by Jorge Oyarzún Sardi and
Océano and Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta

Siempre soñó con el océano. Lo que se llama soñar, despierto y dormido.

He always dreamed of the ocean. You could say constantly dreamed, daydreaming or asleep.

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Draw Out the Child

by Cole W. Williams

He has found our child,

the boy–in flannel, TIED SHOES, and jeans, was not in the water for a swim. We know the boy is misplaced, we know the boy was head under, wet hair, too long.

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Another Poem on the Wall

by Pilar Rodríguez Aranda

What is it about a wall? About the action of marking or writing on it? What kind of power does it exert on the writer/painter/activist/transgressor, and on the viewer/reader/witness/accomplice?

issues

Issue #2

Cover Art by Jessica Dawn Zinz

Contributors: Kayla Rodney, Christopher Atamian, Joy Alexander, Yi Jung (Jolene) Chen, Michelle Villegas Threadgould, Jessica Dawn Zinz, Richard Oyama, Yuan Changming, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Satya Dash, Raphael Luis J. Salise, Guna Moran, and more.

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Ode to Joy

by Kayla Rodney

Over two-hundred years ago black feet
In shackles shuffled to shores they were unsure of.
The jingle of chains a precursor to the jingle of change in coin purses
Used to purchase us.
But still we sang into blue skies…

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Owl

by Guna Moran
translated from Assamese by Sadiqul Islam

I can see at night,
not in daytime.

After the nap
the ribs talk to the bedstead.
…

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The Birds

by Guna Moran
translated from Assamese by Bibekandanda Choudhury

Because they do not have a
permanent home…

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Ghosts

by Zach Murphy

There’s a formidable stone house that sits atop Fairmount Hill. It’s been for sale as long as I can remember. …

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1945

by Raphael Luis J. Salise

I lied
when I said
“I’ll be home soon,
don’t you worry about me”
…

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i held you at gunpoint

by Raphael Luis J. Salise

we are soldiers, right?
comrades, always there for each other

no one was watching us, right?
it was just you and me in the middle of the night…

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Maybe a Lesser Sin

by Thom Brucie

I did not want to watch my grandfather die
but I did
as surely as I watched him
prune his grape vines…

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The Garden

by Michael Buckius

When you were 12 years old you destroyed your mother’s garden. You used a miniature souvenir baseball bat that was purchased at Camden Yards two summers prior. …

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Alice in Chemoland

by Kim Bockus

Two months into chemotherapy I begin to think about Alice and her Adventures, triggered by the toxic cocktail coursing through my veins and permeating my brain. …

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Today’s Menu

by Penny Harter

Preparing the cup of coffee that leads off my day—one of just two cups, the second only half-decaf—has become a ritual. …

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About Loss

by Penny Harter

Recycled loss composts this garden. Loss of everything dear you’ve treasured since childhood: your tin shovel the sandbox swallowed. The mewing kitten your mother rescued from the white line. …

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geology

by Sean J. White

who knows the difference between lazurite and lamprophyre a rock is a rock is a rock is a rock
unless a rock is an answer …

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Sonnet of King Tut

by Satya Dash

Had to argue against tale of breasts
Curving to shape my narrative of breath
…

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The fragments we call throes

by Satya Dash

rope me by grips of mane vowels in my name
jealous in yearn feed me me
liver hearted God was I no skin or hair no wound

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3 Prose Poems from Leafmold

by F. Daniel Rzicznek

Limitless, compassionate energy between snow and tree, the fall of each, those several thralls. …

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They Said—We Said

by Karen Loeb

Match the comment with the response.

Relatives/friends: Why in the world are you going to adopt a child?

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Four Prose Poems

by Howie Good

A Toast to the Dark

I search my sock drawer for a clean shirt to wear. On the subway, I pretend my briefcase is full of secret nuclear launch codes. …

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Self-reflection

by Roy Duffield

a reflection on the self reflection of a
self portrait of the poet as a young man as a self
…

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smokedark vacuum

by Ryan Greene

in the void
a whole lot of floating
old old light
…

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5 Bilinguacultural Poems

by Yuan Changming

盲人摸象(the Blind Feels the Elephant): Another East Idiom

Here’s the elephant…

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The Field Animal’s Dream

by Richard Oyama

It does not think of the boy’s bird screech and water pistol, the girl’s pas de deux and pursed lips. They batter each other’s head with flattened palms. …

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Fake palm fronds for our wedding on mars

by Matthew Dettmer

I got home Friday night with a bag of potato chips because the woman working at the gas station a third of the way home saw me lurching down the aisle with the shelves of wine and said “no booze for sale now” …

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9 Poetry Comics

by Jessica Dawn Zinz

full & complete
change is
by its nature
difficult.

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You Give Me Fever

by Amanda McGuire

Three eyes in the back of the head but it’s impossible to see the reign beyond & above…

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Long Overdue

by Amanda McGuire

Leaves scratch the sidewalk again, and the air here is electric with possibility, according to the meteorologist. ….

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Love at 101 MPH

by Michelle Villegas Threadgould

No hay reggaaeton sin ti

Tennessee is a black tree blur
…

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“You can’t shoot”

by Michelle Villegas Threadgould

Not film / Not guns / Not you

But I could

and I did

when I outran you

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Mom’s Hot Milk Sponge

by Sandra L. Faulkner

Dear Mom,
I made your cake today
since I can’t see your face
…

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Dear Alice

by Sandra L. Faulkner

July 8, 2020 / Dear Alice, / Today would be your 112th birthday. They tell me that / I look like you…

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Lessons from Quilts

by Jill Carpenter

Quilting develops an internal ruler—I know an inch, or six inches, or 36 inches when I see it.
…

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I had to laugh

by Joy Alexander

I had to laugh.
I just had to laugh,
my thoughts, a manic violin.
…

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Hydras From My Psyche

by Joy Alexander

It was late evening and the Jamaican downpour of rain made it seem even darker in the bus in which my mother and I were traveling. It did not matter that I could not see outside from the rain beating on the side of the window or glimpse the shadows of trees sprinting by the window. ….

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Anush Uhllah!: Christmas in Morningside Heights

by Christopher Atamian

Growing up in Yorkville in the late 1970’s, nothing thrilled me more than visiting my dear old Tante Angele in Morningside Heights. Manhattan had not been completely gentrified yet, so Yorkville still retained its mostly Hungarian and German flavor, and Morningside Heights might as well have been Tokyo, it seemed so far away…

issues

Issue #1

Contributors: Siobhán Scarry, Lyn Baldwin, Ellery Akers, Lauren Camp, Abeer Y. Hoque, Joy Castro, Wyatt Welch, Iris Orpi, Annelies Zijderveld, Rob Carney, Justin Kitts, Marvin Shackelford, Paolo Bicchieri, Edward Lee, Lynn Finger, Elena Valdés Chavarría, and Irina Mashinski.

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Interview in the Aftermath

by Siobhán Scarry

How do the thoughts move?

With whirring, with wings, with unthinkable thoughts.

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Collecting the Grip

by Lyn Baldwin

On a Sunday afternoon in middle March, I open my truck door and step into in the high, thin light of a spring afternoon in the upper Lac Du Bois grasslands, just north of Kamloops, British Columbia.

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Five Prose Poems and Drawings

by Ellery Akers

After working for months banding seabirds on a rocky island, I lean over the rail of our boat and smell land…

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Here I Love You, New York

by Abeer Y. Hoque

Here I love you, New York.
In the neon-striped night, people rise and roar.
The sirens and singers vie with their ululations.
A hundred times I listen.

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Lilith, Arizona

by Wyatt Welch

I was,
I was each time,
conventional…

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Driving through Louisville

by Iris Orpi

Friday 2011, Chicago

Razor slices of red-tinted winter sky through the blinds, like verses of a waning fire.

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Instructions for Making Caramel

by Annelies Zijderveld

1.
Pour the sugar and water into a heavy-bottomed pan set on medium high until the sugar roils in what resembles ecstatic agony—but don’t reach for the wooden spoon to relieve it.

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Why We Have Tides

by Rob Carney

Because The La’s were playing on the stereo, and the crescent moon looked frozen in the morning, and I wasn’t thinking about traffic because these phrases kept popping up and keeping me busy . . .

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Why We Have Otters

by Rob Carney

Just now, in the middle of a nineteenth email from OTL about Kaltura and their systems-training videos to help us “begin immediately transitioning” to teaching all our classes via teleconference . . .

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Hotel Hell

by Justin Kitts

Get to see your face
In a hotel hell
Not much to look at
But it’s better than jail

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Liminal Pastoral

by Marvin Shackelford

Along the tar-chipped road ponds dry at their edges, banks spreading, the streams and springs that feed them narrowing through their stones and winds, disappearing. The sun works at the earth unimpeded for weeks, sets each evening far behind the parched trees bunched across the horizon.

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from Familial Animals

by Paolo Bicchieri

at some rodeo

you kissed my neck in front of my grandparents / it wasn’t that you couldn’t / everyone laughed / it was that five miles away / someone wept when they heard the crack…

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Calles

by Elena Valdés Chavarría

En las calles del olvido
merodea un recuerdo de ti
que persiste
pese al tiempo…

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The Poet and the Child

by Irina Mashinski

Anyone who remembers, a lifetime ago, trying to make out new patterns on the wallpaper each night and being terrified by the dark frightening folds of that strange shape on the chair will understand what I am about to say.

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Before Dawn

by Irina Mashinski

a bird of glass,
a bird with a scratched throat,
a bird that tries to tell it all at once,
a bird that turns its head when called,
a bird that’s pinned with hopes…

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Ophelia

by Irina Mashinski

I slept to you,
slept into you,
and then, to fall asleep, escaped from you
behind a cardboard wall, as if unbound…

interviews

Interview with Rob Carney on Facts + Figures (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, 2020)

Rob Carney: People need their wildness back. Using figurative language to evoke the animal in us seems like it ought to be one of poetry’s jobs…. Personification is helpful because most people need to, as [Robinson] Jeffers says, “uncenter our minds from ourselves” and “unhumanize our views a little.”