Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jon Wesick
A Fistful of Cake
Loaded with hawks’ cries and horses’ huffs
Ennio Morricone’s score wails
as the camera narrows on cakeslingers’ squints.
Eli Wallach’s, Clint Eastwood’s, and Lee Van Cleef’s
hands tremble near leather holsters.
Eastwood chews the cheroot
clamped in his jaw.
A twitch,
fusillade of thrown pastry,
and chest dripping in strawberry jam
Lee Van Cleef tumbles into an open grave
Hundreds of Jon Wesick’s poems and stories have appeared in journals such as the I-70 Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, and Unlikely Stories. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and host of the Gelato East Fiction Open Mic as well as the NAV Arts poetry reading. His latest short story collection is Saint John the Blasphemer. He lives in Manchester, New Hampshire and longs for gene editing to bring giant wombats back from extinction. http://jonwesick.com
Laurence Morris
The night of his arrest I climbed a hill
to find a deep cave in which to hide
Sarp Sozdinler
As a kid, Nehisi used to sleep in a treehouse. He could curl right into it from his bedroom window. He would have a hard time falling asleep every time his parents got loud or physical.
Three poems on Counting for National Poetry Day: Max Wallis, Julie Anne Jenson, Brian Kelly
I don’t wear them
or have any
but you gave me a pair
of seven-inch goth platform heels.
Fizza Abbas
They say change is a constant,
but this constant became a coefficient
always racing to catch me
Scott Elder
What will you do in winter dear when drifts
cover your fingers and shoes
Laura Webb, Edward Alport, and Jaime del Adarve: Day 3 (re)place feature
Tour of the Excavation Collaged from text in the ‘Ice Age to Iron Age’ gallery at the Great North Museum, Newcastle, UK The enigma is why this civilisation became extinct at the same time as a peak in carbon 14, which is a natural element, but in...
Richard Meier, Will Pendray and Fiona Dignan: Day 2 (re)place feature
Agony Because of all the sleep, the rooms that show up reddest on heatmaps for recording the use of space in houses tend to be the bedrooms. Orange or orange-yellow, the next most-used – the kitchens. And so on, getting colder – living rooms, green or turquoise – till...
Erik Kennedy, Sally St Clair and Catherine Edmunds: Day 1 (re)place feature
Animals on Leads We entered the town and the first thing we saw was a woman taking her ferret for a walk. ‘Nice day for it,’ I said significantly. The ferret was going everywhere at once, an absolute possibility engine producing the energy of a...
Roger Allen
AFTER YOU HAVE GONE Morning moves with tempered sound. A heel turns by the green gate. The alley setts rest in purple curves. Some night seems to have been left here. Pots of sweet herbs are placed to fill the yard with subtle scent. Somewhere a...