“I run past what I thought was the end / of myself.”

“Need another double-black / kiss. I’ve got more hunger than my body can hold.”

by Sarah Garzoni

So happy to have my poem “Last Call” in the Drink-themed issue of Muzzle Magazine alongside my word-brother Rickey Laurentiis. Pour yourself a drink and then click here to read.

I, for one, prefer Johnnie Walker Double Black on the rocks.

3 Poems in the Current Issue of Vinyl Poetry

by Francoise Nielly

I’ve had my eye on Vinyl Poetry for a good minute now. This online journal consistently publishes poems that I keep me coming back for more. I mean, really, there’s nothing to do but shout “glory” after reading a line like this:  “I am dreaming of tornadoes again, too many for the sky to contain.” We have Aricka Foreman to thank for that one. And don’t even get me started on poems like “Southern Comfort” by Phillip B. Williams, “Black Iris” by Rickey Laurentiis, “Fort Bragg” by Nick Ripatrazone, “Pax, Fortuna, Salus” by Brittany Cavallaro… Need I continue? Surely, by now you’ve started reading Vinyl.

In any case, I’m really have to have “Closet of Red,” “After Last Light” and “Hour Between Dog & Wolf” alongside the work of so many writers I admire.

Reading & Re-reading “Autobiography as Cartography” by Sandy Longhorn

by Federico Carbajal

Sandy Longhorn, a poet I’ve had my eye on for a while, has two poems in the current issue of The Collagist. Here’s the first stanza of “Autobiography as Cartography”:

Years ago, what was given me was this:
a map of my home well folded,
creased along gossamer bloodlines,
faint veins etched in quicksilver
that killed the draftsmen who licked
the poisoned nib to clean.

Go here to read the rest of the poem. I love the work Sandy is doing here — as she describes it, “dealing in the vintage architecture / of memory…” In fact, I’m going to write it down in my trusty moleskine for safekeeping.

“To wish to be spectacular / like an unlit match imagining to burn…” – Susan B. A. Somers-Willet

by Rook Floro

To wish to be spectacular

 

like an unlit match imagining to burn

or the spent match remembering its burning:

want flying over its pale wooden body

all acetylene brightness and rough sound –

a dense limb fearless

in knowing the flame, knowing its desire

equals its consumption,

use to uselenessness in the motion

of a body made ash with abandon.

 

The matches in the fold-over book all agree

it is the most beautiful thing

– from Quiver by Susan B. A. Somers-Willet

 

“After the First Shot” featured on Verse Daily

by Liza Sylvestre

What a surprise to see my poem “After the First Shot” featured on Verse Daily today.

Poems For Breakfast: Ankney, Brimhall & Dameron

"Seated Man" by de Kooning

• Started my morning off with “To Failure” by Christopher Ankney. These lines, in particular, were the poetic equivalent of coffee this morning: “…like fire once it realizes / it can breathe, you prey on the world, leave us all / self-described martyrs in our own ashes.”
• I’ve been obsessed with Rookery by Traci Brimhall for a couple of weeks now. “Falling” is one of the poems in that collection.
• And let’s take a moment for DeLana R.A. Dameron’s poem “Beetle” which concludes: “Look, I know / what it’s like to see / the world upside down, / waiting for someone / to fix you.”
• In retrospect, these poems in combination — while exquisite — aren’t exactly pick-me-ups, but whatever: It’s the winter solstice; it will be dark again in like an hour anyway.
• Okay, fine: A reason to smile — Landscapes Made of Books!

Re-reading “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

by Olsen Zander

In the last semester of graduate school, Rigoberto Gonzalez my workshop great advice about what to do when it seems we’ve fallen out of love with poetry: “Go back to what you were reading when you were in love with poetry. Find those poems & see what was in them that made you fall in love in the first place.”

And so, this gloomy December morning, I’m re-reading “Song” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Here are the concluding lines, but read the entire poem to see how Brigit drives us to this point:

Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song

is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

But I Remember The Song…

by Sean Edward Whelan

I wonder what Reginald Shepherd would have had to say about the sky over New York this first December morning, and if Tory Dent would decide to sleep in, shoving the alarm clock off the night stand, and if Joe Brainard would be at work on another collage, and who would Essex Hemphill wake up beside this morning, and where is Assotto Saint, and where is Melvin Dixon, and where is Thomas Avena, and where is Donald Britton, and where is Tim Dlugos, and where is Jaime Gil de Biedma, and where is Leland Hickman and where and where…

With a grateful nod to Philip Clark & David Groff’s Persistent Voices (Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS), I will be tweeting links to work by these voices today, December 1, World AIDS Day.

3 Poems Featured in Ishaan Literary Review

by Martin Klimas

Happy to have my poems in the debut issue of Ishaan Literary Review, alongside work from Jeannine Hall Gailey. When I was studying at Western Kentucky University, Jeannine happened to be visited Tom Hunley’s Poetry class on the day that I had to present some of my poems. Afterwards, she told me that I should start submitting my work to literary journals. “Really?” I said. “Really,” she answered.

Thanks, Jeannine and congrats on the success of your new book.