One of the Maenads Speaks to the Singing Head of Orpheus as It Floats Downriver How can I explain what we have done to you? We heard in your voice the mad longing to be broken from the body’s reins, to return to your beloved and put your lips to the bite marks on her… Continue reading Traci Brimhall
Leaving is a thing you’re always doing and can’t forget. Leaving is a kind of pact you make with yourself, when you tell yourself you’ll be fine wherever you are, whether it’s the beach with tiny white shells or the carousel with the funny green train or the window you like to climb up on… Continue reading Rebecca Givens Rolland
I learned how to find you in whispers. — Molly Likovich, from “A Song of Cups and String,” The Shore (no. 2, Summers 2019)
As if love hadn’t led me here, so awake with all this time to hold and nowhere to put it. — Bob Sykora, from “I Have My First Vision in the Middle of the Night,” The Shore (no. 2, Summer 2019)
Night and nightshade, yes, but also the night-blooming cereus, itself a cloak of nameless fragrance, its face an hours-long brightness in the desert, crumpling under morning’s fist—yes, the night-bloomers and also the nightingale, night- song, night-dew, the nightside of the heart as if it were a moon, the privacy, how… Continue reading Claire Wahmanholm
If you dissect the poem, this is what you will find: a handful of broken glass, salt bedding routes into our cheeks. If you crack an egg, something spills. The rabbit is limp & yet, the moon continues to glow. The rabbit is limp & yet, here I am, mouth stupid and dry. Palm of… Continue reading Yasmin Belkhyr
The poet is buried in the obliterated whiteness beneath the dark letters of a poem. — Jennifer Moxley, “Fragments of a Broken Poetics,” Chicago Review, Spring 2010
