Category: 21st century

Bessarabian Days – William Fleeson

A Chisinau bus will teach you the city. The Moldovan capital’s network of these vehicles, and its trolleybuses and marshrutkas – the decrepit minivans, unchanged since Soviet days – could take you anywhere, for nearly nothing. Mostly you paid in physical stress. Riders crammed into spaces meant for people half their size; young mothers loaded…

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TWO POEMS – Jim Lloyd

Peregrine has put them up;
one, against one thousand. They
need eyes in the back of their head.
His eyes, forwards only, burning
on the brown-gold and white
pulsating flock.

ONE POEM – Clare Starling

And here I am, unsure of my value
Crushing myself through the doors 
Ice and dirt crumbling from me
Leaving meltwater on the mat

ONE POEM – Elizabeth Gibson

like you are the aurora borealis, a thirsty balloon,
wanting and worthy of more air, ready to gorge
on forest fruits, and salt and garlic, and cinnamon,
like you are every season and its harvest

ONE POEM – Eugene Ryan

Our joke ran
that I would hand him the ladybird kite,
him in his little black windbreaker,
and I’d plead with him to hold on,
and he’d smile like all the world wasn’t enough,

ONE POEM – D. Parker

stick your worm-like head
to the surface of muddy waters
will yourself into existence

TWO POEMS – John Kefala Kerr

I grab the deck rail,
expecting a disturbance
—a pitching and yawing—

but the ferry glides smoothly
over the sea’s fleecy crimp,
like a brush through kid fibre.

ONE POEM – Andrej Bilovsky

They don’t make
houses pink and white
like coconut ice-cream.
They’re always plain, dull colors.
It’s all so easy
when it should be exhilarating.

ONE POEM – Ben Nardolilli 

The body wants to do the dropout boogie,
a way to just slowly spiral out
of reality and not include my self with its accessories

TWO POEMS – Adam Stokell

I see the cat before the cat sees me.
White with black splotches, a longhair.

Leaving the law behind it,
stealing easily as light fails

ONE POEM – Andrew Button

Everybody called her ‘a character’,
a regular in the library
in her shabby Barbour jacket
and crumpled hat perched
on hair dishevelled as a bird’s nest.