Poetry



Look, Up in the Sky

The mask? Because we were never ugly enough. Because our ugliness was epic. Because we were given to it, because we were so misgiven. You wear one. I wear one. Yes. Kings, Pharaohs had them fabricated, poured out in gold and beaten. Most wore them to the grave. In Mexico the living wear them, not

READ MORE >



Recalculating

You can’t be part of the problem if you don’t see how you’re part of the solution. “For a poem is not the Poetic faculty, but the means of exciting it in mankind.” -Poe, Drake-Hallek Review Information wants to be free—from personification. As if all we are and do revolves around a hollow center. Every

READ MORE >



Couplets

here you are faceless bobs like flotsam in the strait narrow sea scented with iridescent oil radiating in rainbow swirl as fin glistens before tell-tale lollipops are sucked into the cistern

READ MORE >



Quarterly Report No. 6: Ethnological Warfare Atrocity Exhibition

But for the present, it’s beyond my control. When it finally happens after yet another 20 minutes, the helplessness underscores the inexorable reel of martyrdom, twirling madly in and out of love, as if the whole universe will now be birthed into another plastic bag, clean as disinfectant.  We – all of us sworn witnesses,

READ MORE >



Quarterly Report No. 7: Epiphytes And Vetiver Control

in memory of adult film actress Karen Bach Before the fourth sunrise, the road shoulder has already shrugged off its riffraff, grass grower over night without tea or sympathy. Side alley slippers from the lights,

READ MORE >



From A To Z, An Action-packed Zoetrope Via Taste, Fruit, Bodily Organs And Synthetic Organisms

acrid mango mandibles android! bitter abdomen banana cyborg! sichuan cylons cardio coconuts! gourd doraemon digits acidic! mexican telerobot lemon uterus! fallopian fizzy fembots figs!

READ MORE >



My Flooey Love

The Merlion, after Thumboo, Euripides and Trakr the dog Not quite what was planned, but neither are we entirely (ever) allowed free roaming privileges. My flooey love, How you have arrived (ended up?) at this river, is a question

READ MORE >



Starling

Excerpt from Sentence 5. Starling I once knew a guy named Starling, but I don’t know if he could speak Latin and Greek like the one Pliny the Elder heard. I bet my Starling was more like Ben Jonson’s Shakespeare: he knew little Latin and less Greek. Well, I bet he knew “lxnay.” I know

READ MORE >



Death of a Pope

The following poem is excerpted from the latest issue of ZYZZYVA, number 81. Death of a Pope If my father had been pope, crowds would have filled the hospice yard with tears and prayer. Bells would have rung. Someone would have lowered flags at Marshfield City Hall. I might have been his chamberlain, touching a

READ MORE >