Poetry

Letter from American Airspace

By ELIZABETH A. I. POWELL

 

The end of romance was what the teenage girl
was telling you about on a bench in the Jardin
in San Miguel de Allende, giving you T.M.I.,
but you realized she might need a Father who is not in heaven.
She gasps: Tinder is even sleazier in Mexico, how could it be
nostalgic? You listened, like your poems do when you write
them down in the cafes of Kerouac’s time here. You are Angelico
Americano with Instagram—troubled children of your own back home.

Letter from American Airspace
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The Way Cacti Quiver

By SARA ELKAMEL

 

I am beginning to think about the middle,
and how we should behave in it.

When I say you held me closer than clouds hold birds
you tell me it was coincidence we slept at all.

Of course I want it to stop. I dream every night of a man
with the head of a man and the body of a scary sea creature. 

I dream the man is lost so I carry him home. Of course
I mistake water for home and home for water but at least, I try. 

The Way Cacti Quiver
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Epithalamium

By EMILY LEITHAUSER

 
The morning after we decided not to get engaged
(I’d ridden the streetcar alone;
 
I felt purposeful and ashamed, my mouth stained with wine)
I sat down in the shower and wept
 
into the crook of one elbow, my arms folded over,
as the shampoo ran down my breasts
 
and spine. I was studying the contours of my knees, when it
took me suddenly,
Epithalamium
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March 2020 Poetry Feature: Frances Richey

Please welcome poet FRANCES RICHEY to our pages.

Contents:

—The Times Square Hotel

—After the Diagnosis

Frances Richey is the author of two poetry collections: The Warrior (Viking Penguin 2008), The Burning Point (White Pine Press 2004), and the chapbook, Voices of the Guard (Clackamas Community College 2010). She teaches an on-going poetry writing class at Himan Brown Senior Program at the 92nd Street Y in NYC, and she is the poetry editor for upstreet Literary Magazine. She was poetry editor for Bellevue Literary Review from 2004-2008. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from: The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, Plume, Gulf Coast, Salmagundi, Salamander, Blackbird, River Styx, and Woman’s Day, and her poems have been featured on NPR, PBS NewsHour and Verse Daily. Most recently she was a finalist for The National Poetry Series for her manuscript, “On The Way Here.” She lives in New York City.

March 2020 Poetry Feature: Frances Richey
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February 2020 Poetry Feature: Victoria Kelly

Five New Poems by VICTORIA KELLY

Headshot of Victoria Kelly

Victoria Kelly graduated from Harvard University, Trinity College Dublin, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of the poetry collection When the Men Go Off to War (Naval Institute Press), about her experience as a military spouse. Her poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry and has been made into an animated short film by Motion Poems. She is the author of the novel Mrs. Houdini (Atria Books / Simon & Schuster). She lives in northern Virginia, where she works in public relations, writes and is raising her two young daughters. 

Table of Contents

  • After the War
  • In the Next World
  • Cathedral
  • Before My First Husband’s War
  • Conversation on My Boyfriend
February 2020 Poetry Feature: Victoria Kelly
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Excerpt from BATTLE DRESS

By KAREN SKOLFIELD

Excerpted from Battle Dress: Poems by Karen Skolfield

The author of this excerpt, Karen Skolfield, will be a speaker at Amherst College’s LitFest 2020.

 

Enlist: Origin < German, to court, to woo

Perhaps with a desk between, 
some chaste space, the recruiter leaning 
forward, warm bodies on the other side. 

Of the teenagers present 
one will lie about her age, 
one will eat bananas to make weight, 

one pull herself from small-town quicksand.
Lace the hands behind the head, 
look good in a uniform, look nonchalant. 

Excerpt from BATTLE DRESS
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