Showstopper
There I was
torn chiffon & tarnished silk,
the spotlight froze it all–
dust settling from the warm light,
eyes of serpents or fox or both,
mouths agape & the announcer’s stuttering words.
one hand over my breast,
the other holding the remains of my gown;
I still feel
Mood Swings
A tear
(drop)
through my eye lands
on the machinery of my cheek
And sparks shoot off of my crackling face
The mask distorts in unnatural twitch
A pole in my brain spins
and spits ribbons of storm
as a
giant
flying
carousel
rises from the top of my head
The Best Laid Plans
Robert Jakucs
Godsend
Davor Mondom
Sepulchress
Digging beneath the dirt of my body is the only
way I know to escape it: its fatal birdcage, its sung
prison of bones. And as I labor You tell me of all the women
who failed to listen, how now they are enshrouded
in salt pillars & sunken in
The Bubble
Philip Dean Walker
An ekphrastic of Roberta Hahn Edward's 2025 watercolor of a "Little Creature"
She started when still quite young,
creating little husks of life
on watercolor paper, bringing them
into being, wringing them from pores
in the sheet, bright and strange
little monsters, never mean or dirty
Severed Hearts / Murdered Brains
Ecdysis
Still Life
Her Plastic Heart
Disintegration
Dinner
Desire in Ten Parts
Landscape
Scattering, Over and Over Now
The Poetry of Ma Dai
Gowpen & Undertow
Paper Birds at the Crosswalk
Equilibrio Instabile
Observance
Swimming
Leadore
The Word Made Flesh
With Every Classmate I’ve Lost, I Feel like I’ve Failed a Test
Inflection Point
Here To There
A Conversation with Salvator Rosa
The Poet as Thief
“Donc le poète est vraiment voleur de feu.”
— Arthur Rimbaud
Was Prometheus a poet?
Rimbaud says he was, stealing fire
from the gods: technology, knowledge,
human arts and sciences. He paid
a terrible price for his audacity.
Whatever was he thinking?
Look what we have done
with what he gave