By NGUYEN BINH
Some strenuous days I
wish to be standing
by the sharp edge of
the tallest, hardest,
Dover
April 22, 2024
Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry
Poetry
My Sentimental Afternoon
April 22, 2024
Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry
By LEILA CHATTI
Around me, the stubborn trees. Here
I was sad and not sad, I looked up
at a caravan of clouds. Will you ever
speak to me again, beyond
Sappho on the Rocks
April 22, 2024
Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry
Your speech
tongue in cheek, like descriptions of cocktails
in this bar full of handsome strangers
who won’t meet my eye
At Basilica Notre-Dame
April 22, 2024
Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry, Poetry
To say you cannot stand inside the sky and still see its blue
is a way of understanding longing. But here in Penne-d’Agenais,
my favorite lesson doesn’t hold: step over the threshold and
you are all in, Hail Queen in Latin exclaiming from its underside
above a carousel of vibrant glass. It isn’t ancient, but it is pleasing
for a Sunday. Nor is it really a basilica—just a church no one troubles
to diminish. Our guide jabs his thumb at the confessional smiling, and
I mime looking at my wrist, mouth, How much time do they have?
Nothing is very beautiful. They say it’s where a shepherd sheltering
in the ruins prayed for a goat and one appeared. Our pilgrimage is
for foie gras and wine. All day I think of how last week when I left
someone, I turned and they were still there waving. Of Plath writing,
The train leaves a line of breath. In truth, I’m desperate for a world I can
touch: limestone dissolving along the cave’s joints, parched earth that
extends the salvia’s roots. Not even we would exist without constraints.
The last time we saw each other, we had sex in the extra room then
made the bed to look untouched. You smoothed your hand over it like a
benediction. I crossed into the open air, your eyes flints of mica through
the glass. The far / Fields melt my heart. I would have left my whole body
there. Would scatter what was left over the plush acres of tobacco in
the Lot-et-Garonne, over the cherry trees hung low with fruit, to know
how it would feel to love this wildly, without purpose, and be forgiven.
Michelle Lewis is the author of Animul/Flame and the forthcoming Spare. Her poetry has appeared in places like Bennington Review, Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Hunger Mountain, and Denver Quarterly.
April 2024 Poetry Feature: New Metamorphoses
April 18, 2024
Poetry
By ALAN BAER, CARLIE HOFFMAN, CAMPBELL MCGRATH, and FARAH PETERSON.
Table of Contents:
- Campbell McGrath, “Hendrixiana”
- Carlie Hoffman, “A Condo for Sale Overlooking the Cemetery in Kearny, NJ” and “Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen County Community College”
- Farah Peterson, “Daedalus in Exile” and “Pasiphaë’s Grief”
- Alan Baer, “Orpheus”
Translation: Poems from The Dickinson Archive
April 4, 2024
Poetry, Translation
By MARÍA NEGRONI
Translated by ALLISON A. DEFREESE
Poems appear below in English and the original Spanish.
Translator’s note:
The Dickinson Archive is a series of 72 short meditations exploring the creative process through the lens of New England poet Emily Dickinson’s lifework and words. Dickinson said she was in the presence of poetry when “I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off.” The Dickinson Archive is a book that elicits such responses. Its poems, based on a few of the 9,000 words that Dickinson used most often, get under our skin and into our bones—whether our internal scaffolding is thick as a mammoth’s tusk or delicate as the rib of a songbird. Though María modestly describes the book as a “tribute,” the unique and unconventional pieces in this archive showcase Negroni’s own experimentation with form and language. Moments in these translations where word choice or grammatical structure may give the reader pause are not accidents; they are examples of Negroni at her finest as an experimental writer forging a cadence, locution, and syntax all her own. The Dickinson Archive is a book about play and creation. What light and lightness to translate such poems, to join this dialogue between women that spans continents and centuries, to channel the spirit of Emily Dickinson’s work through María Negroni’s words.
New Poems from YOU ARE HERE, edited by Ada Limón
April 1, 2024
Poetry
By ADAM CLAY, KHADIJAH QUEEN, ROGER REEVES, ANALICIA SOTELO, and RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ
To kick off Poetry Month we’re bringing you selections from Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s new anthology, You Are Here, out this month from Milkweed Editions.
As part of her signature project, “You Are Here,” 24th US Poet Laureate Ada Limón has commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The resulting anthology of original poems is a timely portrait of the myriad ways the natural world speaks to us and reflects us. Some of the poems included here contend with the destruction of nature, while others consider its abundance and resilience—and some do both at the same time. While these poems emerge from deeply personal perspectives, together they reveal that nature, like poetry, is universal—and that our interpretations of the natural world are grounded in the nature of our humanity. They also serve as a call for readers to take in the nature all around them, wherever they are.
(from the Foreword to You Are Here, by Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress)
March 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors
March 28, 2024
Poetry
New poems by our contributors DAVID LEHMAN, MATT DONOVAN, JULIA KOLCHINSKY DASBACH, and GRAY DAVIDSON CARROLL
Table of Contents:
- David Lehman, “Honor Code” and “Rhode Island is Famous for You (for Denise Duhamel)”
- Matt Donovan, “Looking at the Statue of Athena in Nashville’s Replica of the Parthenon, Waiting for Something to Happen”
- Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, “What does the vulture say to the snowman(?) or how my son is learning to tell jokes(.)”
- Gray Davidson Carroll, “November 19, 2022,”
February 2024 Poetry Feature
February 29, 2024
Poetry
New poems by our contributors CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON, OLENA JENNINGS, MEGHAN MCCLURE, and JONATHAN FINK
Table of Contents:
- Cortney Lamar Charleston, “It’s Important I Remember That Fascism Didn’t Come to America, It Was Already Here—”
- Olena Jennings, “Jane Runs, Sirko Sleeps”
- Meghan McClure, “Cut Through the Center”
- Jonathan Fink, “Proxima Centauri”
Sharp Shadows
February 15, 2024
Poetry
This poem appears originally in Which Way Was North, published by Louisiana State University Press. Poet Anne Pierson Wiese will be a guest at Amherst College’s LitFest 2024. Register for this exciting celebration of Amherst’s literary legacy and life.
