DREAM JOURNAL AND INTERPRETATION FROM A SOBER, HUNGRY ADDICT 1. The golden arches fall. A barred owl lays eggs inside the “o” in “McDonalds.” I ate Big Macs so I can stop using drugs. I used drugs because I could not stomach shame. 2. My Facebook feed, free of fast-food ads, teaches me to make […]
Angela Rebrec | A SERIES OF OPPOSING REFLECTIONS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS
A SERIES OF OPPOSING REFLECTIONS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS Presumably, when something breaks you fix it. Garage door opens—the grinding of metal wheels on metal rails rattles the bedroom floor. All the records of our conduct: lost fortunes and shattered glass, the hole you put in the laundry room door. Tonight you’re back so […]
George Elliott Clarke | TOWARDS A DECLENSION OF “UNPRECEDENTED”
TOWARDS A DECLENSION OF “UNPRECEDENTED” The virus’s unnoticeable, studded, burr-like form is not unprecedented Terror, when one recalls medieval tortures, also not unprecedented— if we check Roman imperial customs— like crucifixion. Nor is it unprecedented that blanching corpses land in that ancient fridge, the grave. Unprecedented, but not really, is the disruption of plump rats’ […]
George Elliott Clarke | WHITEWASH
WHITEWASH White is waves bright as crinkled sunlight—or sunrise, done up in foam White is Grevens Paerecider, Ironworks Pear Eau-de-Vie, Lunenburg County Winery Montbeliard Pear Wine, and Belle-de-Brillet Poire-et-Cognac White is the missing link1 between Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor White is a spic-and-span E.R. with a scatalogical surgeon wielding a shit-smeared scalpel White is […]
Roxanna Bennett | PETITE SPHINXES ERMITE
PETITE SPHINXES ERMITE …….At the Tate, (Modern not Britain), Leonor Fini’s Petite sphinx ermite answers all …….my unborn riddles: broken eggshells, bird’s skull, “a pretty pink” human lung …….swings “at the entrance of its dilapidated lair” as though through years she viewed …….me, remotely, lying here stillborn, slugging masticated slurry through a silicone straw. …….One […]
Waking to WAKING TO SNOW by Robert MacLean | Review by Jami Macarty
Waking to WAKING TO SNOW by Robert MacLean Review by Jami Macarty In mid-December, 2020, Eleni Zisimatos, the poetry editor and factotum at Vallum, asked me if I would be interested in reviewing Robert MacLean’s Waking to Snow (Isobar Press, 2020). Based on my experience that writing a reader’s response to a book I’m not […]
THE FOOL by Jessie Jones | Review by Bill Neumire
THE FOOL by Jessie Jones Review by Bill Neumire The fool’s manifestation in Jessie Jones’s debut full-length poetry collection comes as the speaker centers herself as an isolated sovereign, as an I fortifying itself against the world, which comes out at times as lonely, and at times as powerfully self-confident. According to the book cover, […]
PHILLIS by Alison Clarke | Review by Bill Neumire
PHILLIS by Alison Clarke Review by Bill Neumire In 1773 with her book Poems on Various Subjects, Phillis Wheatley became the first African American to publish a book of poetry. Hailed from New England to England as “the African Genius,” Wheatley, who was a slave, led a complex spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual life, inspiring generations […]
Robert Hirschfield | ROBERT LAX: HOLLYWOOD’S CONTEMPLATIVE POET
ROBERT LAX: HOLLYWOOD’S CONTEMPLATIVE POET What kind of a mystic was Robert Lax? One who could make the dictionary sound otherworldly. He was once asked what advice he could give young writers. He advised studying the dictionary occasionally: “Inside are the seeds you’re going to plant in your field.” Lax was also the kind of […]