Today’s choice
Previous poems
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Art Exhibit
I hear the roar of
the ocean. I hear
a series of shrieks
and long screams.
An eventual lull
comes. My ears
are an abstraction.
I don’t know what
to tell you. Last
night a spider made
its way inside my
ear. It crawled out
with fragments of
wax. I hear the
possibilities of the
thought of a spider,
of a stranger, but
I am unsure of it.
My ear is a triangle.
I hear coughing sounds.
I hear myself laugh,
the grinding of teeth,
the tracing of circles.
My ear is a square.
These are my dreams.
I’m an art exhibit
with wounds I unstitch.
Soon my time will come.
Quick, turn off the lights.
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Fixator Press, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Lothlorien Poetry Review, and Oddball Magazine. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press.
Oliver Sedano-Jones
We Secretly Hate You Here's our booth, come sit with us for a second. Come share this necklace with us. The vibrations here are excellent all night. Have you read Mira Kirshenbaum? That's okay. Have a sniff of this. It's meant to hurt a little. Listen:...
Kat Payne Ware
A NOTE ON PINK These things are pink: tongue; blush; intestine. Candyfloss. Ham. Flamingo. This much we know. The lotus flower is an excellent example of pink. The pink grapefruit is internally pink, but externally a warm peach. A sunrise is sometimes...
Rowena Joy Newman
winter monsoon, Bangkok, 2020 in Bangkok students amass asking after the disappeared in the shade of a banyan tree cut in half, in a diary twisting sugar with ink a seer wonders how to speak of what she has embroidered of a night world of frangipani...
Dean Atta on World Poetry Day
Beachcombing at Night I find a broken compass behind his right ear, two Euros behind his left, bent spoons in each armpit, AA batteries behind both of his knees. He hands me a torch, nothing happens when I flick the switch. ‘Ah!’ I swap the...
Sally Festing
Sunday Mornings You place the pieces on the table pendulum rocker-arm weights escape wheel use a toothbrush frisk the cogs There is a limit to tightening the time a risk of breaking The grandfather should not be tilted sideways backwards ...
Ellora Sutton
After Visiting Grandma After Susan B. Anthony Somers-Willett I walk home from the bone orchard, my fist a jaw of keys. To think I used to know nothing of teeth. Like any good hunter I wear the pelt of the beast – my first boyfriend’s red hoodie....
Jonathan Croose
Walpole Rollerdrome, 1981 At the gate, turn in, skate the potholes, slicing folds of chicken-wire, to carrot-shed, Alsatian, straining at a metal leash. Skate past the long, long ditch of water, once iced with murder, now rusting engines and...
Nicola Heaney
Lockdown: A Portrait To protect your skin, Lockdown wears a shapeless cotton dress. Lockdown thinks it used to be navy, but sunlight has bleached it a drab, nameless blue – leaving no patches of vibrant colour, it is uniform in its lifelessness....
Jo Davis
Bus train bus 1. Fuse White lights in ash trees in a community green space remind me what that week did. I see the mechanics now because I'm in the front seat of the upper deck of the 97 with the lego brick of the stop bell a childish comfort...