From Ruth Ellen Kocher:

My father told me not to whistle because I
Was a girl. He gave me my first knife and said to keep it in my right
Hand and to keep my right hand in my right pocket when I walked at night.
He showed me the proper kind of fist and the sweet spot on the jaw
To leverage my shorter height and upper-cut someone down.
There were probably birds on the long walk home but I don’t
Remember them because pastoral is not meant for someone
With a fist in each pocket waiting for a reason.

– We May No Longer Consider the End

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cover girl

i finally got my claws on the cover for my upcoming book, dirty work. it’s truly not at all what i was expecting, since i tend to view my writing in shades of green and brown and black, like a forest. this robin’s-egg blue was a complete shocker, but the more i looked at it, the more it all came together and worked. something about the blue looking the giant bowl of the northern ontario sky, or something. (the sponge and gloves are a cheeky touch.)

out may 7! all starting to become real now.

.

From Susan Nguyen:

America, the beautiful:
don’t you look impossible tonight?
A two-headed coin. You told me
I’m sexy, I’m beautiful, I’m wanted, unwanted, not a 10
but here we are in your bedroom
and I’m a secret. I’m impossible.
Do you know how to be sorry?
I’m a snack, you said, and guess who’s hungry.

America, where are your hands?

You should know: I remember
everything.

You pulled back my elbows
and asked how could anyone
be sure of my face in the dark?

– I Want to Burn the Frat House of America to the Ground

From @ascpoetry

From Carolina Ebeid:

Did the sky flutter & flower like bridal
shrouds? Did a dog rise in the East in it?
Did a wolf set in the West? Were they a thirsty pair?

And was there a meadow? How many flowers to pick?
And when no flowers, were you gathering bone chips
& feathers & mud? Was music a circle that spun?

Did you spin it in reverse? Was your singing a rushlight,
pyre light, a conflagration of dragonflies rushing out
from your fire-throat? Did you lie down in the snow?

– There Is a Devil Inside Me

From Joseph Fasano:

We are like strangers in the wild places. We watch
the deer swinging the intricate velvet from its antlers, never knowing
we are only as immense as what we shed in the dance.

The bride and bridegroom stand at the altar. Each thing
learned in mercy has a river in it. It holds the cargo
of a thousand crafts of fire that went down at evening.

– Hymn

From Diana Marie Delgado:

From a plum tree

the sound of branches
fall like fruit

I’m older
no longer afraid

my voice like water
pulled from the well

where the wind had been buried
where someone was always

running into my room
asking, what’s wrong?

– Bridge Called Water

From Tim Seibles:

Do you remember

what the wind told the trees
about her brown hair?—
how the cool dark turned around:

that first kiss,
long as a river.

Didn’t it seem like you already loved her?

– Unmarked