where is the river :: a poetry experiment

Emily Izsak :: Three poems Heather Sweeney :: Three poems from The Book of Likes Sarah Burgoyne :: Two poems Jason Christie :: Three poems Abigail George :: Two poems Rebecca Rustin :: Three poems

Driftwood (for my paternal grandparents, Ouma, and Oupa) I’m alone. I’m alone again, a solitary figure thinking ever after of you, for you are the love of Ophelia’s life,   of you, and the ownership of daughters in a maze, the race question, the class system when in Rome. You either love me, or you don’t. You either care for me or you don’t. Once my flesh was a prize, now I’m older, wiser, but what to do with this knowledge, there’s no exit out of this soldiering on, sleeping alone, waking alone, and I’m surrounded by star-people who work miracles on me. I trust so hard, I let the sun go down on me, summers are cold, winters are cold, they whisper of their neuroses to me, and I’m asking for forgiveness, and I’m asking to be loved, and I’m asking you to fall in love with me if you dare, she’s transformed into matter, particles, atoms, molecules, air, Norma Jean and Marilyn, and I can’t accept anything that is less than love, or reading the wonderland-feeling ...

Lauren Elizabeth Raheja :: The Death of Osama bin Laden Rupert Loydell :: Six poems nathan dueck :: Two poems Jessica Brofsky :: Dati Left Daati mica yarrow yes woods :: from Death and Abigail George :: Six poems Gale Acuff :: Five poems

The science of breath (for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee) I have made mistakes in my life. I’m still paying for that dark interpretation. For them with half-malice and delight. How cold the stars. The heroic damsel in distress. Abyss found in dementia’s shoebox. Abyss found in Dominica. Stars are cold in winter. In summer they begin to warm up. Show their true selves. Goodbye my eyes, my swimming limbs. Let me count the grains of sand with my hands. Let me travel slow then hard and fast in this country. Let me moan about the unfairness of it all. Look here at this surface of flame showing off daylight. Flames licking at desire. Look at this earth-dream that once belonged to the river and then the ocean depth of it. I think of the lungs of London. The slow and deliberate inhale and exhale. The busy Amazon-structure to it. I don’t think that men are safe anymore. Their body language tastes of liver and sinful things. Marechera liked sex once. His body (shimmered) l...

Daniel f. Bradley :: Three poems Sara Renee Marshall : from The Landscapes Were in My Arms  Abigail George :: Two poems Robert Martin Evans :: VARIOUS POSTPOSITIONS Anne Gorrick :: Three poems Howie Good :: Three prose poems

On the edge of cracking up (for Gerda and Ambrose, my parents)     I know of the sorrows of this  world. The sorrows of a mother who in     old age has become deaf. She     lost a brother in a car accident     when she was a girl but she never     speaks about it. I try too hard  to reach out to her (even now). I see God in her face      of love. I know she has her reasons     for the ways in which she has     loved me. She was a difficult woman to learn to love but now I can honestly     say that I love her. I turn sketches of      her mysticism into poems that      I don’t show her. That’s my truth. All the habits  of hate-feeling faded out in me over the years.     On the surface of the dark secret      of my childhood was my mother....