a poem by stephen krewson

Carefully


From Twitter, using Python NLTK


It seems like no matter how
carefully you choose your words, they
always end up getting twisted by
others. Choose your words, think carefully, and
then speak up your thoughts. Only
advice is to stay aware, listen
carefully, and yell for help if you
need Judy Blume It seems like
no matter how carefully you choose
your words, they always end
up getting twisted by others. Nah,
pick your battles carefully. Friends, I
want to point out, not all
of my tweets are goofy or
silly or lighthearted. When I
put up NSFW or a red flag,
click carefully. She says "I will
carefully do my best with every
part of my personality". Good
evening - drive carefully! - xxx
Sometimes when I see guys in cut-
off shirts I imagine them sitting
at their kitchen table, carefully cutting the
shirt and I can't not laugh just
carefully explained to me what mansplaining
is. *hides in the bushes realizing that
you are not following me I
creep closer and look at you carefully*
"Today I'm giving my heart to
you, please carefully handle it. Not
because it's my heart, but because
you're inside it." It seems like
no matter how carefully you choose
your words, they always end
up getting twisted by others. –Ernest
Hemingway. I like to listen. I
have learned a great deal from listening
carefully. Most people never listen. Of
course it was. I choose my
tunes carefully. I'm not some drugged
up raver. I sit on the sofa,
listening carefully to what you're saying

Stephen Krewson lives in New Haven, CT. He is a student in Yale's PhD program in English. His recent writing uses ~really~ basic techniques from computational linguistics and signal processing to transform and otherwise push around #language.

a poem by lauren hilger

Awfully


I am in line with something, as when three Andrews Sisters put down their milkshakes
to walk over in sync. A circle hollowed out of the park, a statue, a tunnel of trees, arch.
Even further back. Break up a bouquet. One more glass of water, one more Charleston:
hot, rare somnolence. Again–I want a beginning. NY is for verbs. The bud in a glass of
water, that feeling, that desertscape. As at the end of an Andrews Sisters song,
the sound of a drum
like a piano shutting
quickly that I love.

Lauren Hilger was named the 2012 Nadya Aisenberg Fellow from the MacDowell Colony. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Cortland Review, and Harvard Review Online, among other journals. She is the Poetry Editor of No Tokens Journal. 

coachella tu(n)esday! by melissa presti

Nearing the eve of Coachella, Melissa Presti shares her mega playlist.

a poem by juan luis guzmán

Onions


Have you ever plucked onions
from pockets of rich and loosened Kings

County soil, used your fingers to reach in
and cup bulbs from underneath themselves?

One season, my father leases land to grow
Fresno Sweet Red Onions. I spend weekends

with my mother learning how to draw out
the plant without hurting the value of each

globe. Mornings and afternoons, we pick them,
we take shears, we clip stems, green and hearty,

we place onions in burlap to dry before we pack
and ship them away. At night, I take off

my clothes for a girl with a swimming pool,
hiding my body each time I emerge

from the dark water, pulling out my naked self,
the way I yank onions all day—bare

and so new—the sting of them, still
on my skin and in the sweet red air.




"Onions" first appeared in Pilgrimage.





Juan Luis Guzmán earned an MFA from CSU, Fresno. A member of the Macondo Writers' Workshop and a fellow of CantoMundo, his poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals including BorderSenses, CRATE, [PANK], and Huizache. He teaches at Fresno City College.

two poems by raven jackson

tight


of course I feel like a child
inviting him to step
closer: this white
man full of breasts:
this bulge peeking
through fingers—
pockets of mouth.

i throat him
and he undresses
my scars. the doorway tall.
hinged with veins of metal
and the jangle of things
buttoning. but i stare
at bottles standing
in our shoes.




--



Anniston, Alabama, 1972 


You’ve done it again—looked at that light-skinned woman’s legs like bottles
full of whiskey. Put your hooked finger to her hair.
Percy, my hands are growing
wild. Yesterday, I slid a knife into grapefruit. Split it
into halves & found you sleep on the porch, your mouth
twitching, chin dark with juice. I unzipped
your pants, placed my hand inside. And you rose like a papaya
wet with spit inside my palm—
my left hand watching. Heavy with the glint
of a knife.






"tight" first appeared on The Best American Poetry Blog

"Anniston, Alabama, 1972" first appeared in PANK

Raven Jackson is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at The New School and a Cave Canem fellow. A native of Tennessee, she is currently the Online Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers.

a poem by ted meyer

Living with a C 


An open circle
has a beginning
and an end.
You don’t feel it,

but you do. Each night
she put lotion on her legs
and slipped
through my hands,

pushing me back
against the terrible
curve
of her spine. She coughed

the word “lucky”
in her sleep. Our apartment
was made from spilt principles
and debt. She was a smile

turned on its side,
she was a cup
spilling wine.
Our apartment

was made
from affection
and dust. Nothing
phased her, not

even me. Her
crescent nails swam
through Capricorn
and dreamed

the horns of rams.
The past floats back
and forth. These days
I take my body

into the world
like an infant
so it can love
with its mouth open

and look around. But I come home
expecting her, bent over
counting change
and clipping coupons

for the store, tending
the animals
that lived with us
and died.  Waste

not, want
more. The past
drifts in
like an argument

through a closed door,
telling a story
I don’t really believe;

we said goodbye,
she left,
the streets below us laughed
and groaned

their throaty noise.
Our stomachs
shifted, our checks
unbalanced

from what we paid
to be apart. People
wave, shake
hands, hug.

But we
weren’t people
anymore.

We were ends.

Ted Meyer holds a BA in English from Princeton University, and an MFA in Poetry from NYU. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Linebreak, The Literary Review, The New Orleans Review, Witness, Poetry Flash, and Lyre Lyre. He lives and works in New York City, and recently moved to Brooklyn. Which is pretty cool of him, he feels.

a poem by daniel nathan terry

Afterwards


Fog bank's gray band hangs low over the field.
Cautious uprising; the dead are torn

between morning light and Cimmerian soil.
Visitations can't last; every prestidigitation

depends on faith, and at best, evanesces
into loss. What is this fascination with

the dead? Why conjure them into shifts
of air, into each turn in the weather?

The living push on through this stratus
with such hunger, with such thirst. Look

into this earthbound cloud and see seven ibises
needling the shorn weeds for something to sustain

them, heads and necks of sewing machines
threading the furrows, the broken blades, last season's

blooms so desiccated no one would know them
now. While the dead make their choices—whether to stay

a bit longer or make their quiet apologies—the living
must continue their own, impossible task: stitching the earth

each time sorrow or longing rips it wide.
 

Daniel Nathan Terry is the son of a Baptist Minister and a Librarian. A former landscaper and horticulturist, Daniel is the author of four books of poetry: City of Starlings (forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015); Waxwings (2012); Capturing the Dead, which won The 2007 Stevens Prize; and a chapbook, Days of Dark Miracles (2011). His poems and short stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous publications, including Cimarron Review, The Greensboro Review, Crab Orchard Review, and New South. His multi-media memoir, The Camellia Effect, is forthcoming from Sable Books. Daniel lives in Wilmington with his husband, painter and printmaker, Benjamin Billingsley, but divides his residency with Latta, South Carolina, where he is currently finishing a trilogy of novels, Never Go: A Generational Haunting. Website.