Category: Poetry Journals

  • “I Have to Believe that the Body Aspires to a Soul” and other poems by Ann Pedone

      I Have to Believe that the Body Aspires to a Soul I tell you/there was something about that woman/her face/undiluted/ lips open/as if she were waiting/for the sky to come/down on her. There was something about it that/I needed to know/something that/I wanted to remember/something/it was the light/that mattered/this woman/gathered/the light/ held it in-side…

  • ‘After Rembrandt’s Women’ by Iseult Healy

      Delicious She was no Eve this apple of a woman whose red dress surrounded the flowing flesh of twin hillocks, hung over the ridge of her cheeks to flow down to stocking tops Hot and juicy, easy-peel woman They ate at their pleasure wiped her juice from their jaws munched to the skeletal core…

  • “Distancing” and other poems by Jessamine O’Connor

      Meet me for coffee Not a cup of tea, a pint or just ‘meet me’ because I want to wait awkward at a counter beside you with the steam spluttering, the espresso machine knocking and our overdressed elbows almost touching. I want to sit opposite you at a small table that can never be…

  • ‘Hinges’ and other poems by Jax NTP

    hinges it is easy to obsess over small objects paperclips spoons and q-tips when self grooming generates silence — virginal trumps untamable — the renunciations of dullness do not lead to desire with upturned hands, razors, at rest it is easiest to use sadness as a utensil to push people away spiders construct traps from…

  • A Celebration of Poetry for International Women’s Day 2020

    A Celebration of Poetry for International Women’s Day 2020

    Papyrus Fragment It darts, bares a blaze of underwing to plain sight; this endless fragile need to make a mark, to come to light Papyrus Fragment is © Annette Skade   ‘Secrets of a cartographer’s wife’ by Katrina Dybzynska The cartographer’s wife never told him about her contributions to his maps. A few tiny islands…

  • “This Connection” and other poems by Shanta Acharya

    BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST (After the painting by Rembrandt in the National Gallery, London) In the Dutch room amid Rembrandt’s paintings, I sit sharing my reflections with myself – my woollen jacket no comparison with Belshazzar’s mantle of ermine studded with jewels, his silk turban, white and resplendent, crowning his distracted gaze. The room acquires the aura…

  • “Tracing Rivers” and other poems by Leo Kuhling

    Ambiguous Loss She is a mortician. You see she doesn’t move. No eyes open, only ragged breath. Flushed cheeks. Silence. She has prepared the body nearly a century. Not yet embalmed but ready. The lipstick is a light rose, it makes white face seem ghostly And glasses perch on a nose like mine if lids…

  • Poems written in Dublin by Sarah Chen

    Poems written in Dublin by Sarah Chen

    The Defamiliarizing Effects of Walking Around as a Passerby in Dublin City The defamiliarizing effects of walking around as a passerby in Dublin city a camera in hand and a greater inclination to look up are sweeping and various. You suspend dizzy with secrets – knowledge of red bricks and grass blades spoon-songs echoing from…

  • “Considering Their Pale Faces” and other poems by Erin Wilson

    “Considering Their Pale Faces” and other poems by Erin Wilson

    Seed tōgarashi / omoikonasaji / mono no tane the red pepper / I do not belittle / seedlings ~ Bashō I keep a chestnut in the breast pocket of my secondhand leather jacket. When I picked it I thought of (I don’t know why) my mother. The last time my first husband and I made…

  • “Eat Up” and other poems by Fiadha McLysaght

    “Eat Up” and other poems by Fiadha McLysaght

    Eat Up At home I bury my face in the crease of your elbow You cover my mouth as though quenching a flame In return, my fingernails incise the back of your hand as a gift to you coupled with a promise: I would never do that on purpose I cannot understand why you are…