Poems from No Easy Light by Susan Sibbet
The Longing for Coffee —the bitter thick taste of it against the mouth roof, the knowing back of the tongue. The black steam rising silently, damp cup warming the fingers, cheek, bright, the bright— eyes opening after weeks of rain. The lashes stick with waking salt. Veins and passages, blood and sound clear. Light pulls…Read More
Poems from Poems from The Distant Sound by Eliot Schain
SPARK When the lightning came through the socket in the house he went out onto the Great American Plain to confront his maker and in the thick night air with only smatterings of rain but the deep thunder that tickles bone he thought of the visions that have changed the world—the brave if slightly stupid…Read More
Poems from The Orbit of Known Objects by Lisa Erin Robertson
The Mineral Kingdom ~ Lisa Erin Robertson Just an hour outside of Las Vegas, the sky chilled Baker through winter nights, my cheek against the Ford glass, black and cold like that desert, nothing between December-dead creosote and a sky that glittered like druze, mineral black gleam of coal or diamonds that shone in defiance…Read More
Poems from The Long Night of Flying by Sharon Olson
Remembering in Part The Church is auctioning off its precious artifacts. My mother’s hands press into the floured dough. In lot three, a set of praying hands, nineteenth century, Alsace-Lorraine. With her hands behind my head like a benediction, my mother pushes me off to school. I am searching for a body, terra-cotta, to go…Read More
Ito Naga’s Pensees from I Know (Je sais)
Translated from the French by the author and Sixteen Rivers poet Lynne Knight, I Know (Je sais) is a collection of 469 observations on life and the universe by a scientist whose eye for detail is keen and whose sense of humor is refreshing. The book is profound without being ponderous, instructive without being pedantic,…Read More
Poems from After Cocteau by Carolyn Miller
After Cocteau: Beauty’s Father in the Castle of the Beast for Lee Hildreth When the thorny hedge opened for him, he was astonished; when it closed behind him, the leaves and twigs knitting themselves seamlessly together in the darkness, fear flooded his body, and went with him on the path through the wild garden,…Read More