The Word that Burns on the Tongue
By G.R. Kramer
“Have I not seen how its star fire / lavishes itself into every corner, peers / into the guiltiest chamber of our hearts?”
Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
A Celebrity Couple Divorces On TV
“The couple looks on, a pair of eyes / melting like discarded chocolate, // furtive.”
The Ram
By Jane Hahn
“A round-horned shadow chewing on trash by the side of the road, white flank torched by passing headlights—sears a negative onto your retinas. The ram eats everything.”
Ortolan, Drowning
“Something low and feathery // would rise from his throat as / if he had choked on a bird and that bird”
The 613 Mitzvot and Other Safeguards Against Our Baser Instincts
“to redeem our tarnished souls, updating instantly, adapting in this age / of gratification with a rattle like the sages rolling in their / graves,”
Phylogeny
“Praise God for steam, its generosity / and blur, for the dark nest, / of hair pulped on the shower wall.”
The Killing
“It crosses / a creek hight with spring rain, dying leaves / pulled from
the bank– the dark set in / heavy as an eyelid.”
Gender Reveal Ceremony
“No harm will come to the toad / in this ceremony. but also no kisses.”
Portrait of a Lady
By Linden Smith
“What she’d been calling neurobehavioral and / pathophysiological, was now something made of / mildew and dogshit.”