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.
James Benger
We tore it all down
just to watch it burn,
standing in that alley
of forgotten refuse.
Graham Clifford
Check the cavities in you where hurt goes,
exactly the right shape to house an insult
like a power tool snug and clipped in its case.
Gill Horitz
I woke to workers with blades
along the verge, yellow-jacketed
to signify contracted rights
Anita Karla Kelly, CE Collins, Clare Painter on International Women’s Day
In the beginning of the end she bit the thing she wasn’t meant to bite.
Apple stuck in her throat, one bite taken, then swallowed whole.
Elaine Baker
To my Ovaries
My cahoonas. My muscular daisies.
Potent white olives. You make me sick.
Jan FitzGerald
What is not to love
when you draw back curtains
and taste clouds
in their newness and innocence
Helen Finney
At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land,
craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green
with short bit grass.
Eugene O’Hare
It hasn’t been this bright all year –
the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit,
a head turned away from a thing
the rest of us fear: unearthly dark
Juliet Humphreys
Though I am not a painter
this is to be a portrait
of my parents and my sister.