TagPoetry

Archetype-fetting childhood poem by Harry Chiu The songful-done wording was written at tower I flashpanned along the bluecooling brook. Sunflighting words wrung wistfully wide And all heady lightphrase hazeldown took.   Spundance flew beyond bournebearing hamlet Birdsong like writwalk cantering home. I never flingfocused at washingdin shoreline Nor floatdraft away fromto springberry loam.   Likedream

The Puddle poem by Sonja Cvoric

Love across a Long Table poem by Katie Selbee after Christopher Evans’ “Like a Sauna Choked with Incense” In my unmade mind my fingers perpetually pinch your jaw as if feeling for canine teeth. I am inspecting: considering you first from that angle and then this. With your unvarnished splintered skin you look like Shackleton,

Like a Sauna Choked with Incense poem by Christopher Evans after Michael Ondaatje’s “Sweet Like a Crow” Your hair is like molasses spilled down the front of a new white stove, like the synchronized thrum of forty-two wren’s wings, like a sepia photograph of turtlenecked children Like a drink thrown in serious weather, a mahogany

This work is now accessible only in the print edition, as per the author’s request. You can buy the print edition at our launch parties and ESA events, or send us a quick e-mail request.

Jupiter poem by Karen Hugdahl Meyer A boy dreams of outer space makes a rocket ship from a cardboard box. He is a small planet orbiting his sister— the sun at the centre of his universe. He asks how to spell Jupiter. She sounds the “J” j-j-jutting out her jaw draws a hook in the

Tomato poem by Maia Nichols into some swamp land dream scape I trudged with a small wooden paddle and some grape juice for the morning, not looking back or harnessing any of the uncertainty that was collecting dust in my den back home, naïve yet with a slightly sour aftertaste, like the grapes growing on

Herd poem by Kate Radford I have taken shelter from my kind among slow trees in the glen. Shaded from white cloud-light by waxy leaves – some spined, some smooth – layered in shades of green whittling the weak light to bright points of white. Underneath here is wind and the second-hand rain (a morning’s

forced feels poem by Emma Wilson peelings on the table must be brushed off with a quick hand and collected by the other. roughness of orange remnants must be scrubbed with equal roughness. calluses scrape the surface, fingernails knead dirt in the kitchen and the garden. * other fingers need my skin to trace the

What is Possible poem by Michael Warne Close fall bark. Walking through the woods, I can’t help but wonder: do I make this much sound in the city? Door closing, keys falling, barking. I’m only now noticing the way couch potatoes grow eyes and roots, and how bookworms never crawl.

The Things Our Mouths Know poem by Jessica Vugteveen Samson met Delilah at a party, drunk on wine, after he’d pulled down a temple full of Philistines. He knew her name before he’d asked, another talent from the Lord, and the name opened like a flower on his tongue, De…lie…lah, the petals curling in his

Oysters poem by Tara Simonetta Slimy Slippery Sliding off the half shell into my uncle’s mouth “Tastes like watermelon,” he says As he throws the shell back onto the beach. Scrape Crash Oysters fall into the bucket Barnacles bursting Calcium grinding A knife through the shell “do you want the muscle?” Salty Watermelon of the

This work is now accessible only in the print edition, as per the author’s request. You can buy the print edition at our launch parties and ESA events, or send us a quick e-mail request.

On Fishing poem by Stephanie Airth The trout is a sliver of silver birch bark With gills like beet-stained paper snowflakes And a heart black as cherry jelly. It lays congealed on the gutting table; One solar eclipse eye wilts as it stares Up at heaven and sees .                                        nothing. It knows It is the

The Contours of Nature poem by Alex Winstanley Adam named the contours of nature to chisel a line between night and day, snake and lion. He walked naked in the midday sun, letting language linger in the sway of the light like a dryad clothed in the translucent tears of the willow. He let the