Todd Mercer

Listen to the poem below:

We’re almost to the territory when the river takes our wagon.
Also swept downstream: two fine horses harnessed to it, the team
I’d planned to break the ground with on our homestead claim.
Susannah stands dripping on the bank, reaching for a fallback notion
that fits with the loss of provisions. She’s the brains in this operation.
The bad call to ford it here, that choice is on me. I know without it being said.
But the hands that plucked the children from the top of the rapids—
those were …

Samuel Vargo
It’s ten o’clock
And I’m at my desk.

Again.

But I don’t know what to write.
Though I know tonight I don’t want to work

on the novel that’s working me.

And I don’t have anything to write about.
But for once, I want to write short. Concise.
Something with punch and flair. Something
Cool. That’s the winning writing recipe –
Like a poem that I wrote when I was 26,
And in love, and very, very drunk.

That’s how all my poetry started

that was accepted by presses years ago.

When the editors wrote back,

Telling me …

Dawn Pink

Snap of the scissors
Around the frayed twine.
Yellowed card stock tag reading
KINDLING
Flits to the ground.
The brown sack’s mouth yawns
And sighs out bundles,
Hitting the carpet with the sounds
Of an August storm.
Ribbons holding the folds together
Every crayola color.
Dusted letters creak as they unfold,
The creases well worn
Out pours decades
Of heart’s blood and tears,
Bravado and tenderness,
To a name unrecognizable
Though the handwriting is clearly hers.
Hundreds of bows
Thousands of pages
Signed with her everlasting love
And never addressed.

Dawn Alicia Pink studied Dramatic Theory …

Sarah Grout

Listen to the poem below:

an aluminium can rolls
lacking purpose caught on an
intermittent wind, it moves
forward five paces, then dawdles
then rolls back slowly
the gradient of the road
unexpected without the wind;

misplaced, a flag flaps, torn to
immaterial pieces, but still hanging on
high, its purpose a series
of nods back and forward
across the steel pole,
clanging, asking the unwritable
question;

graffiti in block orange letters
spelling out death to immigrants
screams across the brick
walls, crumbling from the weight
of the concerns of the before,
but fluorescent, bright in …

Seth Jani

Listen to the poem below:

It’s where the border breaks
Into a mirage of daffodils.

Where the water shines
Like stretched metal.

Where a blue finch’s whims
Leads you on a summer’s day.

It emerges from the fog-addled eye
Of the deep circumference,

A jolt in the brain’s machinery,
A passing through.

From the dark, collective waters,
The memory-voiding sea,

It gradually appears:
Green motes, neural tinge of light,

The beautiful vehicle of the body’s motion.
We move through the familiar space

Piecing together the painted fragments:
Trees, cities, your brother’s rusted car.

The entire wavering …

Olivia Vande Woude

Listen to the poem below:

Wears a Nike hat

Scar on his left wrist

3 centimeters long.

Inserts the key

of a chain with a yellow pig dangling

among other
5 carefully serrated pieces of gold.

We are a lot of people in this country,

Ethiopia

I am from the Northern part.

Likes the quiet

of Alexandria

says it’s good for old people.

Told him I do too.

That’s good, that’s a great feature.

Yellow wool lined teeth
Sweater vest

Camel colored shirt, striped
Coffee and cigarette breath

Receipts lie

endless

on the floor.

Clock …

John Stocks

The last train is waiting at the station

With all tension, all motion stilled

On this night of grey- ice, hoar frost,

Know this

Sometimes it is enough just to exist.

On the longer journeys time stops

Is as fixed as every station clock

Under starlight, when nothing stirs.

Perhaps you were the green eyed girl

Who sighed,

As if weary of life’s travails

As if weary of all your lives?

Briefly we shared

Our parallel lines.

Perhaps on some other track

We know each other?

Have shared our dreams

And sit together

Watching the snow flurries …

Ariane Mass

I said you were like a horse who was an old zippered suitcase & when you asked why, I said it was because when I was massaging the musculature under your skin, imagining how those parts must have once performed astounding feats & carouseled from caravan to caravan, I thought about what must have happened out there under the billow’s blow because I could feel your muscles flexing for the suspense of a suspended fall in the shroud of a shadow of a circus whisper,

& your nerves —those bundles of fiber— told my prying fingers of …