Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jade Kleiner
Deeper Than
After Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
There is the green that birthed all pine trees. I had a green turtle necklace just like that once, I lost it, not in a pocket, not under my bed, not down a drain, just lost. The shell wasn’t turquoise not emerald not verdant not turtleshell and so on, just green for its own sake, the kind of green that points north, that can’t be contained in paint, a deeper green than my eyes. I can’t retrace my steps, it’s lost like I never owned it. But a green that true isn’t anyone’s to own, not mine, it’s not even free, just loose.
Jade Kleiner is rooted in New England. Her poetry, fiction, and haiku can be found in Free the Verse, Bright Flash Literary Journal, Haikuniverse, and elsewhere. She is transgender.
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
Jena Woodhouse
Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts
Kate Bailey
They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.
Ibrar Sami
Across the barren land
where blood once played its savage Holi,
the fearless migratory birds
have returned again.
Anyonita Green
It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly.
I peer at it, nose close enough
to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant,
inhaling through slightly parted lips
Soledad Santana
Seen as she’d hung her cranial lantern
from the roof of her step-father’s garden shed,
the parabolic formula was skipped; like two calves, we followed the fence
to the end of the foot-ball pitch.