Treading The silent chorus watches from behind the bedpost while I lay my body to rest next to yours. The days are still longer in the alphabetical bucket list of these losing games, where we start dreaming of new things to add so that the list never ends. Jesse Holwitz is a 24-year-old student at…

Adirondacks Hands covering my face, elbows braced like trunks on the desk, eyes fixed through my fingers on the window, out of the window, where we're shown the moon, completely still, as if it were dead at the bottom of a lake, and I try not to look into the open mouth again, gaping between the…

Almost A lullaby through the pit of branches. She hums gently beside me: Oh sweet and ancient bruises! Something finally spoke. I watch the right sadness cart its way over the bend, into my sleeping house by the river, where I had almost been. It never happened the way that I wanted it to. Jesse…

Finding Out The darkening spots of bedroom Bloating like diseased organs In the uncaring night. The snowfall in Amherst Resounding triumphant over my mind Like an artist in the wake of a masterpiece. We wake up next morning And go to sleep next evening. What's perfect about the world Is whatever I…

Fall Wheels lurch forward in steps through the caked mud. It keeps raining, the first time this season. Something else pokes its head through the hole, arguing with its entire body to be alive. Did anybody mean for the drops of rain to make this parking lot opaque and pale? There is no great…

Shook Enough shook in the air, hurled like a fig where was I before I took an errant bus solve x for the route number like a side pocket in a lung where I store fresh, home air in case I find myself somewhere not quite my planet edging into another's vision a world where the table's set…

Night drips from the rooftops. But then someone laughs in the alley and fractures the breath of stars. I glue it and tuck it in my smallest pocket – to hold me in my dreams of incense. Samo Kreutz lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Besides poetry (which he has been writing since he was eight years…

Among concrete towers the sky is torn, and a sparrow lands on the tram wire. Its wings folded into prayer – on the night when the city forgets its sandy shadows. Samo Kreutz lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Besides poetry (which he has been writing since he was eight years old), he writes novels,…

City lights flicker and I hear the neon veins carrying the blood of night, while a stranger hums a song. We walk – but I stop, because somewhere between the incense smoke and the kitten's purr I almost remember how silence tastes. Samo Kreutz lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Besides poetry (which he…

Warning This poem is in another language. It was written in the far future (I can't explain). This poem contains preservatives. It will outlast the pyramids and strike dread into the lives of freethinkers and skeptics alike. A helpful exercise for stammerers, to read this poem is to have your eyes…

(A teenager attempts to explain the) Ship of Theseus and so I tell him a band is not a ship though it would be easier to think of people as planks of wood bound together in the hull of the world but wood has no voice to sing no hands to write every person bears a different grain to glide upon the…

The Moon and the Elderly a tribute poem With lessons learned, these didactic memories of varying light and dark are ghosts whose visitations I've lately taken a liking to. Now, I'm just a nondescript blade of grass at night among the decrepit multitude, and all together we murmur of our humility…

Dear Engineer My sonar is broken, so now I'm rendered incapable of measuring the depth of this river of tears or detecting whatever trash or treasure lies beneath—not even the lies that ruptured the dam and released this current. But my hearing aid works just fine, and near bedtime I always find…

Full Speed Ahead Rush of ghosts and warning signs, my windshield a movie screen: The mountain road and beyond soak in nostalgia and sunset, a film I'm unskilled to direct. Down in the city, the mechanic warned that the brakes remain problematic. I hope the next gamble will be my last, assured that…

Enduring Memory I still remember the snap of fallen twigs, the canopy of turning maple, beech and birch, the narrow path littered with acorns, the blue columbine stoic in its stance at the ragged edge of the gravel trail like it was yesterday— the surrounding silence on that autumn morning as we…

If We Pretend that the details of the Vermont landscape are lost in the solitude of my mind— river birch, mountain ravines— these scattered thoughts inscribed in our memory although our muddy footprints are now covered with fallen foliage as the scent of rain invades the hillsides like memories of…

Cold Shadows Without hesitation, I turn back to yellowed pages of last October when we witnessed milkweed parachutes airborne across meadows bordered by goldenrod and sumac— a litany of melancholy captured in sunset's afterglow—hours after you left. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the…

Mustering Words I try to discern the actual meaning of that muted conversation in the corner café like words torn from pages in a private journal— everything she said inaudible— the details of why they met, nonsense syllables they exchanged under a winter sun. What happened when the train…

First Date Tilt-a-Whirl On the third day of a heatwave, my deodorant fails me. I'm wearing a dress the color of a bruised peach. A man I met online, who wrote on his profile "I'm a hugger, not a mugger", invites me to meet him outside a vegan, vaguely pan-Asian noodle bar with collapsing signage.…

After the funeral Standing black pillars; Grief is the only one that manages to move its face hidden behind a tangle of hair its glycerine wetness that escapes an eye or a twisted face a desolate space between the mourners and their raincoats the unseen occupant in a shared umbrella the swift…

Cookies for us I take a deep breath in. I ask myself the question that has become my mantra, a haunting tune encouraging me to better myself, what would a kinder version of me do? The answer is easy, bake cookies. My small kitchen greets me with warm sunlight. I find comfort in its smallness.…

Internal Compass My mother finds her way to her parents' graves without a map. It's like an internal compass, she replies when I ask her how she knows. The way her body remembers how to drive places she hasn't visited in decades yet still knows when to turn left, turn right. She walks with less…

Steak That night, you stood behind my chair, placed your hands lightly on my shoulders, asked if I were okay. Yes, I said. Yes, I thought. I'm better than okay. Not only from the quick and gentle pressure of hands that have not touched me in more than thirty years. You offered a plate of steak…

Acorns It is the season of falling acorns, landing on the deck with a report that sounds like gunshot, not that I've heard one at close range but the sharp sudden hit on mahogany planks my second husband painstakingly refinished two summers ago brings me into the now with a snap, with a slap, the…

Gestalt Once on a first date a man asked me to free- associate the table's centerpiece in three words & i said pink—fluffy—fairies & he said pink— synthetic—plastic & what i want to know is not can you describe something by its composite materials but can you metaphor it. semaphore it. allusion…

Green In another version, I don't move to your country and you don't leave me there. The guava doesn't ripen on New Year. Your mother isn't asking us when the wedding is or teaching me to make kofta. I don't get used to a skyline of beige minarets and the adhan crackling from all their…

Customer Service after Joy Sullivan Dear , It has come to our attention that the following life has not reached you: making lifelong friends in college meeting your partner at age 20 having children in your twenties being a stay-at-home mom stable finances, location, and community a faith full of…

In a café somewhere in northern Italy A woman in velvet pants is dancing with her dog. The music shimmies and sparkles. A dark-eyed boy named Lorenzo isn't listening to his mother. Pudding-thick hot chocolate plunges past your lips. Leaf-chairs cradle you. Ivy caresses the walls. People in…

Phantoms The fog could trick you into believing you were alone out here. The air has cooled faster than the water in this September week and you are diving for hope in autumn's waters. The other bank is lost to the mist. Foxlike, you now hear things before you see them: the formless monster of a…

I never told my mother how embarrassed I was every time she didn't accept things as they were asked directly for what she wanted refused to order from the menu as-is (every time). For instance, my mother wrote a curriculum for our church Sunday school because she found theirs lacking. For…

Three Summer was swimsuits and sunshine: As soon as each day warmed itself at the sun's fire, we'd torpedo out, all sunscreen and freedom. We'd stay in the pool till raisined skin, too easily broken on stone- peppered pavement: bloody footprints tattletaling the way to the bathroom. Pause to…

How to decorate your home Don't even try, the first month or two. It's busy season at work and you don't want to rush. Then, start with candles and something else burning and impermanent like weekly flowers. Get a plant but make it basil, something easily eaten if you kill it. Postpone wall art…

Where the Heart Is 40,000 feet over Wyoming and 4 more hours until arrival and you will be waiting at the airport carrying home in your smile In the name of homeland security there will be no reunion as I step off the plane I will follow the other passengers calmly toward the baggage claim with…

Postcard from Alaska I thought I'd left romance far behind when I saddled up my Oldsmobile and rode for the North where no one would know me but the mountains. I left behind the red-bearded boy who blushes when I write him poems. He gave me a book and a kiss; I promised to send postcards. I gave…

she lays a hand on me she lays a hand on me. on my chest. like a stray, her hand wanders on my body's surface; on the unimportant fabric around all important organs. at night, on the right threshold, she comes to a stop at my heart. not to be a flirt, but to let me know she knows where i keep my…

i want to keep your heart in my life i paint my nails the color of your shirt, because i don't think you learn what you're taught—i think you become the people in your life, and keep all the organs you can. Linda Keemu is a seventeen‑year‑old student based in Turku, Finland. She writes with a…

salt is the stabilizing seasoning my mom's hand on mine as she shows me how to make salmon soup— the good, not-soggy, not-muddy, not-salty way. i know that: salt is the stabilizing ingredient. and how could it not be? the salt was in the air when i met you at the beachfront in brighton, england,…

the art of empathy (towards oneself) and how to practice this, on the fourth day of november, drift out—like a leaf boat— from your zero-six derivatives classroom in b6. amble into the stairwell. into the girls' bathroom. kneel in a prayer on the cold tiles; allow yourself to stand shorter than…

Attendance My child self has come and sat on the brink of a storm cloud— the legs dangling in the air, a lollipop in the hand, a straw hat on the hazel hair. Between licks he hums a tune I had forgotten half a century ago but now I remember word for word. He watches me run below, at random in the…

E = mc² A bee alights on a pansy in a garden. A million light-years away across space a proton decays into a pion and a positron. Infinite change continues throughout eternity. Total energy remains constant. The mind remains quite indifferent. Only the physicist loses sleep over that, while the…

quizlet: vocab i must memorize to get an A in your class terms in this set (11) mastered (8): apostrophe noun. a majestic fool thrusting words in midair, watching them dissipate into unreceived letters from Greek apo, away + strephein, to turn example: could you glare at me once more, elegantly…

你好 김밥 你好 김밥 Amy Shin is an undergraduate student at New York University, majoring in English on the creative writing track. She was born in Korea, raised in Hong Kong, and studied in Hangzhou. Her poems seek to unearth transgenerational memory against the fractured backdrop of Korea from the…

Consider any meadow And so many slender tails, licked clean by beetle-march, deep below the soil Nicholas Hoffman is a medievalist and writer from the Hudson Valley. He lives outside Washington, DC, with his partner and any number of pet rats. His work has been published in Chronogram Magazine,…

Little Light-Eaters Our light is far off, crushed to life under unimaginable pressure I'm afraid you found a light in me knowing what I know: Some things breathe the breath of others The Pleiades are all carved out by now casting their thoughts onto the face of Dusk himself And black holes, in…

Letter to You from Ashland The creek. All that gentle rushing. Suddenly, I am seventeen back in the ferns by the bank with you kissing, kissing. Before tonight's show, I've got to get Mom to a doctor, then there's bracing myself to push her uphill. Were your eyes flecked like amber? I remember…

witness every day has felt like its own end long hours swallowing each whole. tears pad the rim of a screen, ridges of the cloud like the grooves of mattress. each week with leaden limbs and shoulders. each moment waiting for a message to come, always something to celebrate, always something to…

The Naming of the Names The telephone rings and rings all morning long, you are afraid to answer, speaking might interrupt all the sleeping you must endure, all the voices attempting to name all your names for what is unspeakable, believing that the truth might absolve all this aimless walking…

My Crowning Glory I Because I hadn't a clue how to care for myself, my father cut the rats from my hair that night after trying first to pick them apart with gentle hands rough calloused from loud machines. The clock ticked forward in another room, the black and white TV sat atop of the one that'd…

Marianna And you're a prophet, wild cars pass by here— After the sorry kiss, two pairs of eyes exchange patient stagnation warm hands over the tucked neck in an arc. Maybe you can take me out, anywhere not the fifty-six miles-away-from-here Chinese-Italian fusion restaurant You will never get…

Ten thousand mountains At fifteen, a girl with a jar half-filled with water is drenched in rain subsiding; the bark peels off, and in the beam of dying electricity, the body faced east, and there is barely a sound before the bomb splinters into empty. She observes the enumerating hunger, but she…