Conversational in style, James Knapp’s poetry revels in irony in “Dimensional Detachment Therapy”— “I walk around department stores/in my pajamas”— and employs the consequential in “Silver Linings”— “Somewhere/past the flickering/yellow light I know/you’re waiting for me.”
The sense of touch is valued in Somnath Ganapa’s poetry: the poems resonate whether the subject is Van Gogh, the beach, or the piano. An example of this gift in “Beginning Piano”: “I gingerly lifted her upper lip with gentle fingers,/ Revealing white and black teeth underneath./Back straight, reverent fingers on middle C,/It was my first time.
The concrete image is principal in August Ritchart’s poetry, but don’t mistake it for simplicity, as the image absorbs meaning. See “Visiting Hours”: “You mailed me an Easter basket this year/Inside were some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/The special egg-shaped ones/I ate them/And these eyes can’t see far enough outside myself to know/ Which parts of me are your hand-me-downs.”
Sandeep Kumar Mishra tells stories in his poetry but he never abandons the poetic line. “Pebbles” exemplifies the skillfully crafted narration and metaphorical voice: “But patient jeweller of tides;/Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,/Heat-cracked, wind-carved,/Death shapes compact among the rocks.”
Conjoining the language of music and the agency of poetry, Sara Marron ponders the depth of humanity’s touch. It reverberates in “Some Privileges”: “Putting my arm around your waist, taking your backpack from you to descend the subway/ platform, walking:/In relievo, sotto voce; subito triofale/A direction to make the melody stand out, voices in undertone; suddenly/triumphant.”
There is no escaping the gentle, fully in control poetic voice of Jerrice J. Bapiste. No matter the theme, her poetry blesses with meditative meaning: “My heart knows a deeper/truth. I open/the bag let some air in,/place the stone on my/wooden desk, remember/my mother loves me when/eyes tear up at sunrise/ at the old monastery.”
Rebecca Larkin knows the powerful play of irony, nowhere more so than in her poem “Get It Together”—personification and metaphor as vehicles: “We’re all rooting for him/ TO GET IT TOGETHER,/He’s basically a tree that had its feet cut off/And its nose washed out by acid rain/and its leaves of personality waxed up so hard/they can’t photo-synthesize.”
Figurative language is the essence of poetry, but its timbre is varied from poem to poem—“energetic,” “vital,” “arousing” are descriptors in Mari Pack’s poetry. See “The Milky Way As Path to the Other World”: “a life of too many sugar syrups/meat caught in a blender, coughing up/nothing but dust –/high pitched notes/ shattering in round, operatic soprano holes.”
The Ladies of the Hour The ladies sit in rigid chairs, hands crossed in skirt-covered laps. A silent room made loud by expectations. Miss Understanding smiles [knowingly] but never speaks. She fears the labels- foolslutbitchuselesswoman- but can’t live with the judgement. Miss Take quietly steals bagels and donuts from the untouched serving trays sitting in the back of the room. Miss Behavior watches and frowns, though secretly envious and so
Smoked oysters, red wine, and Darla’s brown skin open to air in the middle of changing her shirt. I’m drinking whiskey, playing old songs— the one about the girl we want, the one who left. The woman outside watching the fire she built might not be as pretty, but her white dress and black hair dance in these mountains. The railroad strike is over, the harvest is coming north. All
I.
The green chair was the width of a three-year-old
so when stretched horizontally across your legs
I was perfectly encapsulated by its soft, mushy arms and you
you put cherry blossoms in my curls
A Calling The sunrise burns us up. It’s been a long night and nothing has been refused or taken back. All of our friends are stealing night terrors from the cracks in the walls. We have kingdoms melting in our pockets. We have trails of crushed cherry blossoms threaded through each rib. We’re reading The Ethical Slut and hitting on German lawyers. In the Dutch winter the parallel scars on
Saint Sylvia Mark him for the amniotic writ as he stands before me, pockets full of stones. My weightlessness will not prevent his sinking. The half-hearted are heavy. The one before him was full of lead, a crown of bullets worn as life preserver. Seeking Daddy’s meridian eye he fell down. Sank. The brute jelly fish. I draw them, grim-faced men, like the moon. Pitiable poets who fashion garnet daggered
We have tattoos and an impeccable work ethic, They do not know where to put us. Our faith should be in the old system, In white male hood we trust. I drink. I curse. I go to work it doesn’t slow me down. “I’m a vegan.” I shit 4x a day. (No, not really) I see no time any day to rest or just lay. I could blame the whole
Appeasement What you did wasn’t so bad so you told yourself as you stood in the garage, waiting for hope. Hope for appeasement by an ex-best friend but the rusting white chariot that slowed then accelerated was Tundra not Tacoma No, you’re right, it was terrible to live without love in small rooms with flawed creations, the trivial handiwork of a dream gone bad Do you know the grail is
Transfiguration Black ground eats the light of every heavenly expression in this ungratified November night. We watch the dissipation of vapor and mist, endearing darkness further to itself, betraying the tranquility of nocturnal harvest, the lunatic scraps of this moment fighting to keep their particular bearing. In this nearness, I measure the asymmetry of your features with my own, revealed by a sudden and gradual intrusion of amber, a different
Empty Parking Lot, 2:07 a.m. over that hill, past the mills, is the crooked house I escaped from. it wasn’t a great fall with the colors, mostly hunter green and rust with the rain. like it was too depressed to go ahead and shine like it usually does. now, it’s a sheet of white, the dying hidden. catch snowflakes on my tongue, a cold smoky taste. how winter feels on
The milk moment, the churning need- bubble echoes empty into “them.” The words that circle, your bird’s eye view is weak and needing. Only what you catch will live another day; so it’s spoken. The words you hear are reminders, a memory stream bright and beaming. What you say to yourself, how you picture what is thought and felt; all the word storms that plague and infect your life, all
Hidden Losses It never crossed my mind— what would happen after reaching, finally, that happiness. How it would feel giving up the open-ended beauty of indifference, my love of following the dark into the secret corners of people, cities —feelings that can only be scraped against by willing to give it all up at a moment’s notice— To be done finding love by pulling it out of the dirt by
Manumission …from the mud, spiraling double-helix intent upon apotheosis ersatz DNA, verisimilitude of countless generations separating us from first mover/primordial ooze copies of copies effigies of weltschmerz simulacra of daedalian dreams melted by sunrays burning as we venture too close or wake, blinking at the morn. What then? Can we escape the cave, turn from shadow to illumination, or should we find contentment in mud and echoes? Cigarette Flick Speeding
Breslin White’s poetry is matter-of-fact, yet the irony in “Whence” plays with this pragmatism. “With Mother,” the line, “Some of these shapes look suspicious” injects a contrary interpretation. And the poem “All Alert”? Readers, like the swans, are “placated with the transformation.”
It’s hard to match Samuel E. Cole’s lyricism. In “Instinct,” it’s the visualization of the child’s “heartbeat adrift/among the sounds of/cosmic collision”; the natural imagery as foreground in “Cherry Horses”; and the narrative of poverty wailing “multitude horrors” in “Epiglottis.”
Leigh Fisher shows how the art of poetic narration works in “Fairer Hands,” in which the poet tries “to scale a ladder that was never made to be climbed”; and in “Diploma for Daedalus,” where no labyrinth prevents her success “with this degree in hand.” In “Dotted or Solid” she learns “the goal/is obeying the road’s lines.”
Elizabeth Luchniski shows us how to see women as individuals in “12 Ways of Looking At a Woman,” just as she does two men who “share a laugh/Discuss the unknown” in “Skyless Sky.” And “A Poem Is” a poem “That you may need,/But only if/You can feel it.