Joan Colby – Earthworms
Earthworms Digging in the loam For nightcrawlers, fat and rosy, Until the pail is full. We haul them home Caked with the dirt they aerate. One child shows another how severed They become two creatures. Brilliant! he exclaims. I explain this is not actually true Which they choose to ignore. Threading the worm onto the […]
Rob Carney – “Tell Us a Secret”
“Tell Us a Secret” When night’s aloft and the sky’s torn up, someone’s brother has to journey. Half to, half from, half until doesn’t matter as long as the myths aren’t skipped: the gold cup, the hovering firebird, the path to the lake. This is lightning, and it wants a story. This is summer, and […]
Jenny Molberg’s Marvels of the Invisible, Reviewed by Lee Rossi
Jenny Molberg Marvels of the Invisible Tupelo Press Reviewer: Lee Rossi Finding an expanse of previously unexplored wilderness, the naturalist is keen to discover an unknown species. Likewise a critic, opening a first book, looks for signs of new life. Jenny Molberg’s Marvels of the Invisible provides many such clues, all hinting at some chameleon-like, […]
John Bradley – Found in a Hollow Book Covered with Cilia
Found in a Hollow Book Covered with Cilia A moist, anonymous brawny brain on a bed, a soft, red, brainless bed in a room with no features, no feathers. The brain, without a mouth or visible speakers, addresses you in a pleasing, unaccented speech: I appear to be defenseless, and yet I am not quite what […]
Sara Backer – I Think They Are Crows
I Think They Are Crows About a hundred flying in the green-tinted zone between slate sky and vanishing half-sun. Parked cars grow black fuzz. The world mutes. Their flapping wings are grand pianos falling. My heart twists as I brace for the crash of soundboards splintering with Beethoven, Mozart, Gershwin, Tatum, Monk—destroyed in a final […]
