Poet’s Sampler: Chloe Forsell

America, she is not
America—
is nearby, is
nearly in sight

Insignia Sonnets

Most of the town pronounces it “eye-rack”
like a gimmick display in the optometrist’s office.
Good Soldier’s Family, we learn to say it properly, roll back
the “r,” display that we’re no novices
with regards to current geopolitical affairs.

Three Poems

Words a rotted barn, full of must
and straw and animals sleeping.
I want to dream with you the mountainsides,
the beaches, the necking in guestbeds,
the words the wiring of our cry.

Maria

The erudition of a monster is a hard, cruel thing,
the way it makes a body ache, stitch to stitch,

with all it will not, cannot, know.  But crueler still
is how the erudition fades, how Frankenstein rose

Lies

The seals are synchronized swimming again, like sad old ladies
in frilly bathing caps

My grandma nicknamed me Lemonade because I was yellow and ridged and buttery as
popcorn in that yellow sweater

The Very Sexy Oracle of Delphi

—peach and coconut flashes
behind vegetable prison bars—

that the prison is the mind,
that the pond is what we call thought.

In Memoriam: Brigit Pegeen Kelly

you lived by what the census left 
unmentioned, all the figments of a world
that nothing can account for, but the soul:

As Artemis: Arguing with the Man Who Complains Everyone’s Always Saying, “I Love This, I Love That”

You said solitude is everywhere
and overwhelming
because love’s worn out from repetition.

hover

some days i carry my basket of swans
to a lake and drown them 

the feathers do not float       no
the feathers will not stop floating

Vertical View of a City

Buildings stake my breath away
needle in a haystack all crumpled
gets in an unmarked car & follows
as usual people are polishing their
caves below & becoming lonelier

Tarkovsky’s Horse

Sleek & black writhed in the silent dust then rose
before us, turning, as it turned, into a horse,
the one from Andrei Rublev.

Poet’s Sampler: Raquel Salas Rivera

The future is not guaranteed. Raquel Salas Rivera's poems remind us that the peril is greater for some than others.

Three Poems

In a shop near a church
            in the center of the city

I blinded myself.

            I held a penlight
to my left eye.

2017 Poetry Contest Winner: Mia Kang

A whole body becomes no body.
A nobody becomes a body of earth.

I was a ruled body
with lines wide enough to write between.

WE DO NOT HAVE ANY OPENINGS AT THIS TIME

Marriage. A bruise tried to cross me off, but only met me halfway. All bodies
A workshop of what isn’t anymore there. There’s loss & there’s talking

Ode to the Corpse Flower

In the language of flowers // I am the one who says // fuck you
I won’t be anyone’s nosegay // this Mary is her own // talking bouquet

Frontier

Mom made us matching guidebooks to Alaska, 
    copied, bound in a Kinkos 
        in the Valley on a school day.

Two Poems

No man was ever buried by the desert.
It takes years to cover a dead camel.

Men rest on top like a crust, bones
in their biplanes, a red and white stripe

Self-Defense

Four car-jackings in three weeks in my suburb;
god sends helicopters and I fall asleep with heat-visions,
nestled in the hum of their rotors; I sleep quite well

Three Poems

Around your androgynous countenance glances
descend like debris. Everyone struggles through
figuring out their bodies. Standing there, you
resemble an “I”—you’re capital—learning that

Frederick Douglass Is Dead

& might very well remain that way,
   despite the best attempts
of our present overlord to resurrect

Triptych

But for is always game.
A man can be murdered 
twice, but for science, 
his body a pool of blood 

Synchronized Swim

Ophélia watches the girl
            spin down through the blue depths,
burrowing in until we see 
            just the tips of her toes

Two Poems

Let’s go on a date! Let’s make a joke

of the MEAL PART, wadding our napkins

into strangled swans, and ordering only

shoestring fries with malt vinegar,