William Blake’s youngest brother, Robert Blake (William’s “special favorite” as one book puts), died at the age of 25 in 1787 of tuberculosis—at least scholars are pretty sure. As Aileen Ward writes in her article Who Was Robert Blake?, “[M]ost puzzling of all, nowhere in the St. James Parish register is the birth or baptism…
Category: Poetry
Two Poems by Trace Peterson
PUSSY my butt my back my stomach my breasts my shoulders my arms leaning on the table my uncanny valley my deskjob aversion my porcupine quills my stoppages my filler my quicksand my elevated archness my foolproof schemes my childlessness my shipping costs my frozen Hopper characters huddled in a diner my ballistics estimates coming…
fit / fright, by TR Brady
eyelids tender from rubbing + reaction become irritated once more I drive out to Kalona at night to see the dark + scream + cry after getting off work at the big box store When back in Iowa City I sit in a BK parking lot to listen to university radio +…
The BOI Rushes To, by MARS
feat. Frank Ocean Saturdays involved making out entrances into life outside / we’ve been in this room too long / recreation is keeping us self-contained and aware / of each other’s form Another love becomes ghost & that’s cliché but true Her hair scattered across my bathroom, bedroom floors. Door the shape of…
Girl Work, by Zefyr Lisowski
Girl Work After Grey Vild Most of them tell me I’m pretty. The first man grabs me rough but fucks like he’s afraid of something breaking. Another has a patchy beard and says how special and underappreciated I am. It must just kill you, he says. The one on Tinder asks if I have a…
“clippings*” by Aurielle Marie
here is an alphabet slicing open the belly of a boar. out come pulverized apples. vicodin. shoelaces. the neck of an artisanal soap maker. there is tobacco in the cupboard and a stew of cigarettes boils on the stove. inside the tv set a woman scolds the circumference of your belly. another prays…
“Breaking News” by Noor Hindi
Breaking News We know death is futile know death as 3.5 thousand retweets a trauma a thing named empty in internet measured in the slow bend of your fingers clicking the quiet tempo of expiration your spleen in the shape of a gun in the shape of a pen I am going door to door…
“On Ekphrasis & Revision”, and “from UNIVERSAL THEORY IN WHICH EVERY FAILED GESTURE TOWARDS LOVE IS A SOULMATE FROM AN ALTERNATE TIMELINE” by George Abraham
On Ekphrasis & Revision A Markov Sonnet with Memory Leak The video game, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, follows an ancient Egyptian assassin named Bayak, and his wife Aya, who work to protect the people under Ptolemy XIII’s rule. Their son was martyred by the Ptolemic police state, and so the game follows Bayak & Aya’s quest…
“First Sex Sonnet During the Pandemic” by Craig Santos
First Sex Sonnet During the Pandemic awkward my wife & i kiss undress inch slowly as if emerging from separate quarantines is it safe skin tensed at the vulnerable risk of reopening Craig Santos Perez is the author of five books of poetry and the co-editor of five anthologies. He teaches at the University…
“Prison Break” by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth
This work is excerpted from the forthcoming book, Her Read, a graphic poem (Texas Review Press, 2021). I began this make-over in the summer of 2016, in that pre-election heat. Finding myself otherwise unable to write, I set to work remodeling a seminal text, The Meaning of Art by Herbert Read. Though the maternal body appears with frequency in Read’s illustrated text which spans from…