Layla

Lauren Clark

The apartment is long, so
if, upon waking, one turns one’s head on the pillow
away from the wall, it becomes possible to see
all the way through the hallway, the living
room, the kitchen, all the way to the stranger
at the counter, where he is placing
a small amount of…

from The Hindrances of a Householder

Jennifer Bartlett

You do not believe you are sexy. You do not believe you are beautiful. You believe you are intelligent, but sometimes the effort to convince others isn’t worth it. You have cerebral palsy from an accident at…

Woman Under Glass

Kelli Russell Agodon

from the Exhibition of the Modern American Mother

The woman wants to be the woman her family thought
she should be, but she doesn’t like cooking. She doesn’t
like cooking or other mothers or doing crafts. In…

Oh, wow, mausoleums,

Kathleen Ossip

says the man who doesn’t remind me of you

except that everything reminds me of you, except mausoleums.

In the important world (my imagination), I am watching you, simply, without hope or…

Dear November,

Joanna Fuhrman

I’d like to order another November
instead of you. There’s some rain
in my shoes and it’s flooding this
poem, turning all the gutters into
used-up guts. A fireman with an ancient
harpoon wanders the parallelograms
of Virgil’s internet looking to be…

They Will [Not] Speak Of

Ellen Kombiyil

The women will not speak when they speak,
they will speak of that time. When they speak,
wiping hands on apron checks, they will not
speak of what mustn’t be named. One might
say that time while pounding out dough and men
will stroke…

King

Sandra Beasley

Among the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

This vexes the one-eyed man, who’d hoped to
play upright bass for a living. He loves
that four-string simplicity, steel or gut,
a job he can do with his one eye closed.

Self-Portrait as Shop Window

Patricia Spears Jones

After David Rivard

………… On the bus

Thus the passing parade — All Hallows’ Eve

Discontinued

Nicole Steinberg

Michael heaves and hacks in the bathroom, a noisy victim
of dodgy Chinese in Vienna and one too many full-fat lattes.
I hear him call for me, pathetic mewl, and I shuffle through
the guidebook for the Austrian equivalent to 9­-1-1.
Sprechen sie…

LXIX

by Emily Dickinson

ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.