Today’s choice
Previous poems
Laura Sheahen
Outsider
What is the ancient curse they know that you don’t
Moving along their mouth-lines and their eyebrows
Lowering their lids, tensing their nods or shrugs
No spell has locked their lips but they are silent
Watching you try, watching you fall again
(Jeweled box with hind-heart bloody in its depths
Mirror that will not show a child its face
Quiet are mice and insects in the castle)
The shoulders shrug the eyes refuse beseeching
And every throat grows closed Hushed with the secret
Watching you stagger
Watching you try again
Laura Sheahen is an American poet who spends part of her time in Tunisia. Her poems have been published in PN Review, The Manhattan Review, The Lincoln Review, and other journals. She writes criticism for The New Criterion, ArtsFuse, The Irish Times, and other publications. lsheahen.substack.com
Mark Czanik
I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers,
and the sacrifices they made following their hearts.
Stephen Chappell
She has a way of tilting your head
as if lining up a thought.
Tristan Moss
I try
not to think
about my daughter’s
condition
when I
hug her
Susan J. Atkinson
I tell you my heart is breaking
but the heart has four chambers
and is not shaped like a heart at all
Peter Daniels
No, no one is who they think they are,
nor what we think they are, either:
the demon inside is thinking it
and you can’t tell him.
Paul Stephenson
Like one of those horses
on the carousel
going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole
Rob A. Mackenzie
Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.
Melanie Branton
A vixen or a reason. A
rave. No air, no sex, nor
Charlotte Oliver
On a bench outside Next,
a punctured woman
traces circles in the air with
a pale finger