Category Archives: Poetry

“What Really Drives You To Drink” – Poetry by Jeff Laughlin

Excerpts, Flappertising, Flappricana, Poetry, ,
The Drunkard's Progress, Nathaniel Currier, 1846
The Drunkard’s Progress, Nathaniel Currier, 1846

Much like literature’s most famous chronicler of the Flapper Age, Jeff Laughlin has quite a flair for zeitgeist-capture. In his poem “What Really Drives You To Drink,” Jeff examines the darkness and sadness that plague us– drinkers and teetotalers alike– and he does it with great elegance and wit. You can read this poem along with other fine lit in our Spring 2014 Issue, now on sale for just $3.

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I.
OF COURSE, WE ALL WANT REVOLUTIONS
with piano loops playing behind us
driving us to the light of salvation.

We all want the moments of dreams,
caricatures of our destinies; we want
model-sizes of us writhing against evil.

Yes, we ache for sustenance beyond
substances, data ahead of information,
a wealth of armies, breaching battalions.

We want the lines between injustices
ruptured, to rip thousands of tears in our
oblivious brain-skin and sensibilities.

We want to be buried in beautiful
graves, our thoughts and actions resting
non-anonymously but not autonomic.

Above us, floating, are the souls of everlasting
life, their bombastic screams louder than
the empty bottles they hurl at us blithely.

Just out of reach, the albatross, the overt
and countercultural masses; all that lays
here is middle-ground, pain, and sincerity.

Here is intransigence, where we are.

Continue reading “What Really Drives You To Drink” – Poetry by Jeff Laughlin →

“Rules and Secrets” – Poetry by Judith Skillman

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Violin Player to the Moon - Hans Thoma
Violin Player to the Moon – Hans Thoma, 1897

Judith Skillman‘s poetry soothes and spooks us, often at the same time. We enjoy her work so much that we’ll be publishing one of her poems in each of our first two issues. Here’s “Rules and Secrets,” which will appear in our Spring 2014 Issue, now on sale for just $3.

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THE MOON RISES FULL OVER,
constructs its premise of light,
followers, hangers-on, into August.
Glints in a tree, its hunger for clothes
left from the first two who fled.

Moon-sultan. Wicker baskets fixed
just so inside the house, where sleepers lie.
This gift of reflection—how long the breath
of lemon balm, cut, exhales & inhales
through an open window.

What was fresh is sullied.
A man and a woman discuss philosophy
in a bedroom, in fluorescence.
Insinuations.  Institutions.  How many days
left in the domain?

The moon continues south over sleepers.
River harbor colors of stones.
This month passes like a dream into the season
of gathering.  The lemon will rise like the sun,
the schools will fill.

Moon of corn, of don’t-tell.
Perfection-moon, rimmed, haloed, dogged.
Moon of not playing the violin with a newly-haired bow.
Of never being good enough to live in the body
that continues to die.

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JudithSkillmanJUDITH SKILLMAN is the author of fifteen books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Southern Review, and Prairie Schooner. Visit her website at JudithSkillman.com

“Dare” – Poetry by Lauren Seligman

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Flamenco Dancer - Sonia Delaunay, 1916
Flamenco Dancer – Sonia Delaunay, 1916

 

From our Spring 2014 Issue, we proudly present Lauren Seligman‘s sultry, swaggering “Dare.”

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SPLIT ME WIDE OPEN, an egg on the side
of a dish. Eat me alive, attack
without permission. I dare you to
come. Godzilla on the prowl for me. Turn over
billboards, trucks on your way. Take me by
the shoulders, shake me
hard, a natural disaster. Burn down

forests thickened in black
ash so villagers choke. Collapse houses into
the pea green ocean. Do not flash, a lightning
storm, be no mumble of thunder that a midnight
shower can bust. I am a flamenco
dancer standing in an adolescent boys’
choir, exotic in my obsessions and intuitions. I am dark

Poland, fragrant bark on the backyard beech
tree I climbed, crouched in the fork, scars on my
knees the color of persimmon fruit. I am July-hot
Washington Square Park, those gypsy
guitar tunes played at sticky night time, London’s
Cheshire Street stones slicked with moss where I
slipped, laughing on my back. I am veiled

Continue reading “Dare” – Poetry by Lauren Seligman →

“No More Poems About Resolutions” – Poetry by J. Bradley

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Fingerprints In Smoke - Alibi Jones, 2014
Fingerprints In Smoke – Alibi Jones, 2014

According to Factual Science Magazine, the average New Year’s Resolution is abandoned by January 14th, at approximately 11:38 Greenwich Mean Time. So now that, statistically, you’ve probably already given up on yet another feeble attempt at self-improvement– that is if you cared enough to make a feeble attempt in the first place– please enjoy J. Bradley‘s “No More Poems About Resolutions” below. (This poem, along with 3 other poems by J. Bradley, will appear in our Spring 2014 Issue, which you can pre-order here for $3.)

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You learn the metric system
to wear new kinds of weight.

You hold career day
for your lungs, show them
all the types of mines
they could collapse as.

You bend love like a hair pin,
treat zippers and buttons as locks.

There are names waiting
to become bricks; how gingerly
will you walk over them?

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jbradleypicJ. BRADLEY is the author of the forthcoming graphic poetry collection, The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014). He lives at iheartfailure.net.