Miriam O’Neal/Poetry
One Reading of the Contraband of the Hoopoe requires a suspension of disbelief, new, unpredictable logic, journeys, tones of bells, strings, and drums, bodies frozen, bodies in motion, many birds, always the hoopoe sometimes the editorial...
Cheyenne Dorsagno/Poetry
People I Knew 1 When I first met you, your shirt was striped – fat purple, thin black, medium pink, white too! No pattern, varying thicknesses. “I like your shirt,” I said. That was a lie. You said there was a dead body buried in your front yard...
Peter Krok/Poetry
Looking For His Mind How many times did he tell himself, "This too shall pass?" How many times did he fall into darkness where his glasses did no good? He keeps falling, heavy with questions. The Master asks, "Where are you going?" "I am...
Austin International Poetry Festival
We’re very pleased to present the work of three featured poets scheduled to read at the 23rd Austin International Poetry Festival: Allyson Whipple, Candy Royalle and Christopher Carmona. The festival’s headline poet this year is Nikki Giovanni, who will read April 11. Giovanni’s performance is open to the public…
Jeannine Hall Gailey/Poetry
---------------------------- 5 Poems by Jeannine Hall Gailey Oak Ridge is a Mystery It cannot be penetrated because of the dark leaves of the oaks and maples, standing so close you can hear them whisper, “Keep out.” The carpet of needles beneath your feet,...
Lyn Lifshin/Poetry
LIPS Yours, honey, were so perfect, a little rosebud mouth, not those puffed up blubbery things, my mother says when I pointed out the models’ collagen petals. “Roses,” my mother always says, “That’s what yours were, a nice tiny nose. That’s from...
John Smelcer on Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer holds a special place in American literature, and not simply because he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice (in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner’s Song), a feat few other novelists have achieved…
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Four poems from her upcoming book of L.A. noir…
When I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:
soon you’ll have breasts. They’ll mushroom on your
smooth chest like land mines…
Murray Alfredson
Hamas Is that jihad war for Allah and his people?, and victory that you have shown the world the evil of your foes? Allah the hundred- named if he is all you say faces no danger; the shells the bombs the phosphorus that you with pinprick rockets prod your enemies to...