2009 Features

2009

Feb 01

Aaron Balkan,

Same Train

Hey, no piñata in that tree. / No tree drenched in flame.

Feb 08

Lindsey Baggette,

Penelope: whoops.

For twenty years you suffered…wasting away the nights, weeping away the etc.

Feb 15

Heather McHugh,

On Purpose Laid

Bitten hind and headquarters by Jove / I beat a blind retreat from love.

Feb 22

Anna Journey,

Snipers in the Arrangement

Let thine tabby cat not vomit stigmata for the lord’s flowers.

Feb 25

Paul Otremba,

Gorgias in Love

For example, If you walk out—I wish to discuss / the nature of things.

Mar 01

K. Silem Mohammad,

I Only Have Eyes

a “thing” in the sky, which was a “place” for it contained a “thing”

Mar 04

Bernd Sauermann,

Blue Report

Report to the people that I am failing blindly in the blue air.

Mar 10

Carrie Purcell Kahler,

300.00: Anxiety State, Unspecified

and starfish to frolic on skyscraper windows–

Mar 13

Neil Fauerso,

Bungeeing In

That sanguine furnace, bleeding in the basement, bungee in!

Mar 17

Kara Candito,

Sweet Reader (There Is Much I Want to Accomplish Since My…

Hold still while I taser you with a heraldic / dwarf in a ring of fire

Mar 20

Nicole Burgund,

Preludes

Later in moonfield thoughts would die / becoming root systems

Mar 24

Brandon Downing,

from Lake Antiquity

outset / haste // The music stopped. / He hurled his bike at them

Mar 27

Zachary Schomburg,

This Is What You Need to Know About the World, Pretend Son

When I cupped my hand a broken hummingbird fell into it.

Mar 31

Heather McHugh,

Study Under Fire

shed the whole / shebang–next week, next month and half / of every life,

Apr 03

Evan Nagle,

Winter: A Transcription

I’m talking, of course, of stars / Those things stuck on my God damn beard

Apr 07

Aaron Balkan,

Imaginary Stanzas

The war was over because: no paper.

Apr 10

Jeff Downey,

Withnail and I

I hope it’s not a coincidence oste- prefixes both osteoporosis and ostentation?

Apr 14

Zach Savich,

Fossil, Snorkle, and Cold Blood

I wanted to write fauna impossibly / tender and necessary as a column of newsprint

Apr 17

Guy Pettit,

Someone Must Live Here

And it formed clots in the sky / Between our eyeballs and theirs.

Apr 21

Brandon Shimoda,

The Grave on the Wall

shimoda is a fleshpot of inferior rank / a man says, Idiot

Apr 24

Jordan Stempleman,

Fixed

UPS driver who’s pounding / on his own front door with his forehead

Apr 28

Caitie Moore,

Trans Manifesto

Have you ever been attacked by a wild boar? Define wild.

May 01

Brandon Downing,

from Lake Antiquity (4)

You glide easily from place to place within it / and you can have it the way you want it.

May 05

Emily Pettit,

HOW TO RECOGNIZE A STRANGER

Like glowing in the dark. / Like twice the inventions in half the time.

May 08

Maurice Burford,

Night Poem

tonight I left Madrid in a moment of shine / exactly as the chord hit the night

May 12

Lucas Farrell,

I Apologize For Nearly Everything Since My Heart Hurts

I don’t know how long I’ve been missing. / I’ve become sad and dusty like a garden hose…

May 15

Evan Nagle,

Climb Up My Genitals; Put On My Coat

Isn’t is but an ice-clod, / Is but a jaw in the law of lost shuts.

May 19

Pablo Lopez,

A man is what he thinks about all day

All things / for love–all things for dying / for a direction words / direct

May 22

L.M. Rivera,

Pre- proviso

The rabbi used the full weight of his shoulder and cracked the keyboards like crackers.

May 26

Leora Fox,

ways to eat a grapefruit

screaming romantically: two fingers, frantic, scooping chunks of pink flesh

May 29

Tana Jean Welch,

The Locusts Are Swarming

tell me why the pit of my stomach bleeds, why the front step stays loose

Jun 02

Matt Longabucco,

The Today Show

fill the toilet bowl with sunshine / and stand naked at the window

Jun 05

Liz Countryman,

Yoda Uvula

In the commercial for the anti-snore device, a man’s throat in scientific cartoon cross section (is)

Jun 09

Luke Woods,

Outside the Walt Whitman Residences.

a meek pilgrim cowering under the height of stories stacked too high

Jun 12

Gabrielle Balkan,

The Dumb Conversation

I made my way through med school forging copies of The Cliffs at Etretat

Jun 16

Carley Moore,

Little Worry

In my movie called The Mother, I am always awake. I use the window shades as eyelids.

Jun 19

Aaron Balkan,

Inauguration Day

the man in $7000 shirt woven from threads they call bullet-resistant

Jun 23

Gale Thompson,

The Most Beautiful Bibles

We are in the future perfect and we are wearing hats.

Jun 26

Sasha Steensen,

The Book of the Grotesque

The writer, a man with a hole in his heart, was almost always drunk.

Jun 30

Robert Mueller,

Cannolies Over the Bridge

You can steal a crisp of chervil / on blankety-blank orbs on gossamer-pinks

Jul 03

Dean Gorman,

[I heard a flawless country song once, understanding that]

a period of singing follows a period of singing.

Jul 07

Sara Guest,

Anecdote of Heat

I set a jar of Peking Duck off the train in Nashville heat.

Jul 10

Alisa Heinzman,

The She, The Sea, The Leaving

She walks to harbor where land grants dampness. The air thickens and is unordinary.

Jul 14

Dan Boehl,

Self-Improvement

I wish someone would bake me snickerdoodles. / I wish someone would feel me inside of them…

Jul 17

Heather Green,

The Apology that Drooped Like a Tree

The trees were basically pregnant / You in the mouth // God in the mind

Jul 21

Sasha Steensen,

The Insemination

the tightly woven knit of his pajamas and the sperm-like tails of a thousand stars

Jul 24

Eric Ekstrand,

Plumblossom

The comet is hitched to its petering. / There is no way to change my mind.

Jul 28

Merton Lee,

Birdsong

Is it that bird means girl, or that a bird’s shrill voice will repeat its surprise in song?

Jul 31

Patrick Lucy,

PITCH BLACK

This was the eighties, that was the eighties, or this is the eighties, depending.

Aug 04

Sarah Louise Garrido,

My periodic darlings

I love you when I mistake your moan for a loon, stitching up the gasp in dawn.

Aug 07

Stephen S. Mills,

My Midwest Knight

everything was true, as true as anyone’s life, anyone’s growing up

Aug 11

Jordan Stempleman,

Something Nearby

enough with training, / give me my carapace

Aug 14

Sandra Simonds,

Also Included in this Poem is a Real Life Astronaut

She Lost So Much Blood She Needed an Emergency Transfusion…lost so much blood she needed an emergency transfusion

Aug 18

Sarah V. Schweig,

Meanwhile in Our City of Abandon

The bay has begun its slow evaporation. The only citizen is awaiting a glass of wine.

Aug 21

Dora Malech,

Copy That

Don’t give us that it’s sunrise somewhere. Try a prayer: Almighty please bother to jiggle

Aug 25

Meg Hurtado,

the vampire speaks to the receptionist

just as the evensong gave out, just as the traffic dropped her clothes

Aug 28

Sarah Louise Garrido,

Familiar Deserts

this is where God comes in (apparently) / scooping out the fun from infinity

Sep 01

Macgregor Card,

Le Soleil et le Police Dog

through the curtain of burning geese / I hope they will not catch fire

Sep 04

Lawrence Giffin,

In Loco Parentis

Often, without any consent and from / out of its arcane architecture

Sep 08

Lucy Ives,

from Blue Flowers

It is spring again in January and leaves dangle We are ourselves and I imagine

Sep 11

Eugene Ostashevsky,

Carl the Craven Raven

He never would pronounce / that fatal “Nevermore”

Sep 15

Macgregor Card,

The Libertine’s Punishment

another red photographed birthday / lost at low lighting

Sep 18

Lawrence Giffin,

Protocol

The example will pass unharmed / in the equipment of equipment.

Sep 22

Lacey Hunter,

from The Stranger

the sea flashing not a quiet darkness but a set of teeth lost inside the mouth

Sep 25

Daniel Bailey,

Some Short Poems I’d Write if I Were in Love Right Now

push me out the second story window / I’ll look up and laugh

Sep 29

Adam J. Maynard,

Stoned (ii)

In the evening you become tired and sad / Watching a robot making an omelette

Oct 02

Dept. of Posthumous Letters,

SELVES DIMINISH A SOUNDLESS HALL IN FURIOUS FURY ONCE MADE

you fear the floorboards / raising up to be your new master.

Oct 06

Eileen G’Sell,

Nobody’s Winter

There were grape leaves we couldn’t / get to, an attic without a home

Oct 09

Sean Bishop,

Sonnet for Sweetypies

Sometimes a sweetypie has nothing to lose / when the black crags crack and muscle

Oct 13

Dan Boehl,

Self-Improvement

13-year-old girls with sex growing in them, babies in light up shoes

Oct 16

Patrick Lucy,

JUST BORN, A TWILIGHT OF DOORKNOBS, THREE BULBS

the dragon held a quartz crystal in its jaws / moonlight saddled my caboose till morning

Lucy Ives,

Ode to America, My Dead Cat, Etc.

A tired man walks a bounding dog and thinks to hope, must I learn to think less?

Oct 27

Nicole Trigg,

If You are the Danube, I am the Right Bank

From the ruin I can see another ruin

Oct 30

Macgregor Card,

Contempt

Now comes the mystery / I have no power / To move my arms

Nov 03

Valerie Wetlaufer,

Helpmate

In the city library, we clutched knees, gazed at men whose moustaches came loose.

Nov 06

Bryan Coffelt,

Oh.

Oh, to jog with suicide eyes, / uh, with a light dangling in front.

Nov 10

Jordan Stempleman,

Agreed

god used to just blurt out, I love it, / love it

Nov 13

Lawrence Giffin,

Presque vu

Still, lacking / the word will not /star her consequence.

Nov 17

Lucas Farrell,

We Are All of Us Nearly Home

The earth is spinning the way children might / when a storm overhead / performs its invitational curtsy.

Nov 20

Lucy Ives,

Poem

She does not like that very nice man on wheels with the face of salt

Nov 24

J. Townsend,

Ecliptic

wait in the breath of / zeros / ludicrous waiting, unspent / hours at cold storage

Nov 27

Seth Landman,

All Year

what’s in the violet / the shepherd from my neck ignited me

Dec 01

Cynthia Arrieu-King,

Poem Fighting Sleep

A big black horse is very rude to me. / I know. It wasn’t. And then choke.

Dec 04

Maurice Burford,

Industrial Poem

tremolo of argyle metal in socks / rectangles plus eyes plus pretty speech

Dec 08

Ben Estes,

Have Cold Hump and Bough

“fffooorrr eeevvveeerrr mmmooorrreee” / Here’s to that risk of poignancy and gamble.

Dec 11

SDA,

Thursday With Borderline

Yes. The fourteenth time already. I will sleep with you when you have ironed your shirt for work.

Dec 15

Brittany Cavallaro,

Aperture

There is a flurried debate about you in fur, as you will be under the train.

Dec 18

Jono Tosch,

The Man I Am Today

Computers are pencils you don’t need to sharpen.

Dec 22

Emily Kendal Frey,

[THE HISTORY OF KNIVES]

I met you and you put me on ice and I froze in the corner of your first bed.