2012 Features


2012
Jan 03
Sally Delehant Haertl, 
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree …
These structures were not built to bend through Black Friday.
Jan 10
Sarah Greenleaf, 
“You Know You’re There”
You can’t tell the difference between numb and empty until (finally!) you find yourself face-down on the ground
Jan 18
Seth Abramson, 
Speed Will Win
no one will be excused from this scene / until the question has been recovered
Jan 25
Jono Tosch, 
You Know How It Is when You Go into a Room?
more than barf had changed–my attitude had changed.
Jan 31
Michael Canavan, 
Just Bodies
How a fire spooks a field out of its hallows, / prone raccoons trapped within
Feb 07
Nick Sturm, 
I WENT OUTSIDE AND THEN I DON’T KNOW
Many different things have the ability to glimmer / and that is as much a reason for joy as for terror
Feb 14
Meg Hurtado, 
Clear & Present
slow as Love, uninterruptible, there slurs the Edict
Feb 21
W. Vandoren Wheeler, 
WHY SAINTS KNIT HAIR SHIRTS
It is difficult to take a cold shower. / It is difficult to remain very alive.
Feb 28
Emily Kendal Frey, 
WE MIGHT HERE CONSIDER WHETHER ALL HUMAN FORMS ARE NOT EQUALLY…
Mediocre and holy we loved each other
Mar 13
Evan White, 
A Light For Someone Else
I like a darkness I can fill up with what / lamps & sun & white curtains made in it
Mar 20
Andy Stallings, 
Freeway
Faceted seaside mornings / A man could wake up dead
Mar 28
Eileen G’Sell, 
Whitney Houston Pronounced Dead at 48
Body as bureaucracy, body as scandal, / stay in our arms if you dare.
Apr 03
Sara Guest, 
Koan Two
Forethought heaps up inside me until a leather strap sets it free.
Apr 10
Jaimie Gusman, 
Disaster [General]
I donate my heart to the nearest emergency cooler. I can feel my heart missing its cadaver.
Apr 17
Dena Rash Guzman, 
Bad Had Good
angels watching you struggle / to reach the itch where soon a tattoo
Apr 24
Leora Fridman, 
WHERE DID YOU LIKE IT
so busy calling out / names for ways to move / when luscious
May 01
Ryan Walsh, 
The Field
thinking about the way summer / has already made a ghost of itself
May 08
Evan White, 
[ritual]
He transformed himself into one arduous task / and out of the hills into the fresh blue
May 15
Seth Abramson, 
Fighters
Who is this became a frozen garden. Who is it, also.
May 22
Shenandoah Sowash, 
Discord
all ink erasable, noose loose enough / to polka
Jun 05
Devin Gmyrek, 
For Love of No One
If I had the power to glare at the meadow / Until snow fell and iron poured into a tress
Jun 13
Michael Canavan, 
Social Media
Like a silver trumpet, I’m beautiful / but bad at my job.
Jun 26
Sara Mumolo, 
NEAR BOUNDARY PEAK
A sense of vigor then confusion to the mustard plants / It’s easy to be the daughter of a terrible man
Jul 03
Jay Snodgrass, 
Birds, Whatever
Hey! I am eating my skin, / whatever.
Jul 10
Avni Vyas, 
Village Women Explain Hubris to Me After I Fall Down a Flight of…
Maybe hubris is the female fig wasp married to the fig, / afraid to die in its vesicles, but too smitten / to escape.
Jul 17
Samantha Nataro, 
Talking To Girls
As a peculiar machine / Squeezes you like a wrist, you standardize.
Jul 24
Wendy Xu, 
AND THEN IT WAS LESS BLEAK BECAUSE WE SAID SO
Romance is a grotto of eager stones / anticipating light, or a girl whose teeth / you can always see.
Jul 31
Noah Siela, 
Dead Room
I’m waiting for attitude to pop / like champagne bottles off the hulls of new boats
Aug 07
Lilly Beshore, 
Carrie
Catching dragonflies down the creek, / she’d skip Sunday service, rippling / squalid water with pebbles.
Aug 14
Caitie Moore, 
It Didn’t Rain! It Didn’t Rain! It Did Not Rain!
River formed by interlocking bodies of color from the body / to the loom I will give.
Aug 21
Michael Leong, 
from MICHAEL PALMER VS. MICHAEL PALMER
Her mind was behind a dent in the rectum of light. For almost a week, minutes turned into months until she decided.
Aug 28
Matthew Olzmann, 
Photograph of a Boy and a Dead Dog
Difficult to say how the boy feels, standing / in the road, the dead at his feet…
Sep 04
Ross White, 
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
I / hid my tail / in this tuxedo, / made nice, / shaking hands / with mayors / until my / pocketwatch / stopped.
Sep 11
Emily Kendal Frey, 
MY DEFINITION OF RAPE
Hooray! Let the despicable / Dark fear / Of me / Be a moth / We can eat, white powder / I am not surprised
Sep 18
J. Townsend, 
Responsible Care
straight candor or even baby talk a / tinge of gallows humor given breath / & insistence to the point of fealty
Sep 25
Evan Nagle, 
The Duos Project
Repeat thus this: / Vanity is space / Is nothing… // Oh baby, show toxic Jo his / Oops!
Oct 02
Justin Rigamonti, 
Dead Candyland
Nestor is a round third-grade kid, with wild eyes that / quiver in their sockets…
Oct 09
Travis Macdonald, 
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To doubt the validity of this principle, / two wives, the name / I am assured by two eminently / of electrodynamics and optics…
Oct 16
Gillian Hamel, 
bonding moment part two
a perfect air and thickness in between of gently punched arms and clumsy cheers…
Oct 23
Catherine Wing, 
How It All Fell Out
they were unfastened, unbuttoned, unhinged, undone (his fly was down!), but open most of all
Oct 30
Adam Fell, 
Dear Corporation (For Precarious College Town Halloweens),
Please, do not hesitate to call us if you need a ride or a washcloth or a space heater or blanket or band-aids and disinfectant
Nov 06
Anne Keefe, 
The Stone Baby
Spasm of floor, torso, palms open to bring out / the new thing, throat against the cries / that do not come
Nov 13
Jenny Drai, 
from “Visitors, Cavaliers”
This had resulted in a mild flower between them— / a glamour row, in fact, where they both wore a red headdress / & stamped their feet
Nov 20
Stephen Danos, 
Brood
See the twin integers of shared genetics, tulips / hemorrhaging new sounds
Nov 27
Dena Rash Guzman, 
To Tim Who Nearly Died Today
Each light, each blue, / every leaf I’ve seen / comes on, barely green, / to burn away its new
Dec 04
Travis Cebula, 
In the Neighborhood of Burning Trees
not because Palestine is [still] / burning did the poet / shuffle into the park.
Dec 11
Christopher Robinson, 
Teargas
You learn not to cry and to make love // a hard stone at the center
Dec 18
Nick Sturm, 
FAKE WHITE COUCH
Very human things / Anchors & pieces of toast / Anything to make you / empathize with me in a poncho
Dec 25
Shenandoah Sowash, 
Pretty Spider
Your mouth opens with sleep, / snores like another’s. / The window wonders.