From Dusie

ROPE DANCE

Morning is a burned thing, Louise.
Spoiled like a shuttered house.

Paper everywhere— under the beds,
in the dresser, floating
the pale skin of soup.

You make a cage of your fingers
to keep out light. Chicken bones
to keep out the dead. Grey
where it’s all wearing at the ends.

Your braids still tied in a V
when the dark comes to you like a cat.
A long hallway. A girl in pink
sateen against a backdrop of stars.

When you shut all the latches,
shut your eyes. A little gin, Louise.
Make one turn, then another.

© Kristy Bowen 2006

From Pirene's Fountain

EMILY BRONTE

these windy slopes are shorn
of the things which make life comfortable:
broad trees, broken bread, the swell

and supple curve of a lover’s back.
I sit here by my window, catch
the rough, sweet scent of heather in my nostrils

and write of death and love entwined
like adders together. The poetry
lies wild in my veins, the poetry

of granite skies stabbed by rocky outcrops,
the giving spring of turf, the taste
of solitude like aloes on my tongue,

the bare, unchanging moors, which take
my sisters and myself with mute indifference
and conquer under soil all our passion.

© Alison Croggon 1991

From Sawbuck Poetry

MARCH

Moth-bodies of greenhouses at mid-
morning stretch out—
a syllable— cross the previous
trickster swamp. That little mister
where nozzles ought to burn,
crying injun at every undisclosed
box with wheels,
box with no way of returning.
Just hit me with it— Felicia says—
if I can get me and my boyfriend a pack—
intruding on this poem. Which one,
Felicia: did she mean
it, kindly? Can the passive be
as aggressive as you feel?
In my army and about my predicament
there are meteoroids covered
in the grass, there are prairie
skirts hovering, hairless as present.
I will be with you presently.
This unmade river not
done in this instant
is, shows.

© Jen Tynes 2007

From Milk Magazine

the syn-aesthete's love poem

And yesterday, blue tasted like licorice.
Even the wind chimes caused dizziness;
the ache of paper lanterns rotting
from the acacias. Perhaps the L in my name
makes you sad, evokes a film where a woman waves
from a train. Or how this horizon wants to be a hymn.
If you listen, you can hear the holes in the alphabet,
the sounds lit by the lamps of our bones.
Perhaps with this page I could fashion a boat
or a very convincing window— 

a dress made entirely of vowels.

© Kristy Bowen 2005

Adam Fieled (editor, West Philadelphia, USA): "On Love"

What tide is the realest, which pulls in a kiss?
     The rigor of reaching the thing-in-itself,
from subject to object, chaos to bliss,
     our frail intuition of heavenly health?
Our love is not molecules, dumbly colliding,
     nor is it knowledge, formal and static,
         nor is it accident, reasoned and plumbed—
it's real, meta-rational, soaring and gliding,
     felt like an earthquake, bringing up panic,
         taking our parts and achieving a sum.

The greater part of love is sacrifice—
     flesh intermingled, tensing (push!) tingled,
this is the secret I learn from your eyes.
     Giving my body, knotted, single,
tiny eruptions that come from my tongue;
     plunging down surfaces, slicking the flesh,
         thoughtless as leopards or hurricane winds—
watching you shudder, watching you come,
     rapt in the throes of an innocent death,
         giving my life to an inch of your skin.

Thus, we trade in secure oblivion
     for reckless reality, messy and fleeting.
Such is the cosmos— creation, carrion,
     motions of molecules merging and meeting.
Nothing is lost but notions of self-ness,
     hard ideations that close and clatter,
         rages of ego that strain at their walls—
nothing is gained but a sense of the deathless,
     "there-ness" of spirit, "there-ness" of matter,
         ultimate "there-ness" that scares as it calls.

© Adam Fieled 2003-2025

originally published in Hinge Online

From diode

thicket

I am all butter cream and lace when
we abandon this house for another
with a picket fence and a tiny door.
Clandestine, destined
to have too many holes we can’t fill.
Despite the flurry of hands, we are drowsy,
playing cards and fucking in the afternoon.
Holding our nostalgia like a cake knife.

Soon, we abandon this car for another
with a blue lush interior that smells like Winstons.
I make a flip book out of our indiscretions’
misspellings. Finger the upholstery
while we play roulette with beer bottles.
Kiss me, kiss me not.
My hope all parade floats and dancing bears
until I split the infinitives,
spill the milk, slit the window screens.
Go for the jugular.

My sleep is still white, all paper and milk.
Counting the cracks in the ceiling,
dividing three and three and three.
Outside the amaryllis is ridiculous,
all lewdly red and unruly.
I am counting spiders in the eves as you leave.
One and one and one.

© Kristy Bowen 2010

From Ekleksographia

SOMETHING MAYBE

The curve of my spine bent,
along subway lines. The only thing
that makes sense is to lie down
on the sidewalk right now,
beer can crushed & tossed across
the street. We're not going to make it.
For an entire summer my life's
solution was to not leave
my bed. A thousand miles later
& I still want something else,
shifty and shifting away from the center.
It's clear now: we were never
going to make it. The darkness creeps
over, smears in the rain. The end
of the night means leaving the bar,
myself keeping myself in check.
Sometimes I want to go back
& do things differently,
but this is one fuck-up I can't take
back. Pink Moon. Pink Moon. Pink Moon. Pink Moon.
Hit play again. Lying in bed, feeling
the darkness creep over.
Let the weird back in. Find a point
in the distance, fast and furious,
something worth racing off to.
I'm looking for something new,
something catchy, something
to fall asleep to.

© Gina Myers 2009

Tammy Armstrong (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada): "Calamari and Ink"

We needed a memory
for a meal no one could finish.
Hooked index fingers into bowls of black—
cursive graffiti
along the dining room table.

Not contained on sponge pads,
cover charge bar stamps
the ink pooled cabaret make-up.
Not all offerings from the ocean are grand.

Squid like a boxed ear
swollen, cut
re-shaped into a gift,
an adjustable ring from a small town carnival
from a lover who doesn’t know me well.
I’d marry if asked.

But these rings bloat the rice indigo
marring late night calligraphy
when we can’t see how
we’ve outstayed another welcome.

© Tammy Armstrong 2006