THE AESTHETICS OF SUFFERING
By Christopher SotoI’m his // retired slut // on food stamps // forever
Sniffing horse tranquilizer // seeing digital dreams
Like a kitten // with eyes sewn shut // like syzygy
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When Your Word Is a Match
By Joseph RossWhen you walk past Klans-
men, smiling at you
on your way into the court
house, wondering how
Currency
By Fred Joinera pocket can sometimes be
a kind of prison,
I have never lived in
Spratly and Paracel
By Esther LinAfter learning his appointment was canceled
and his senior bus won’t come for another two
hours my father calls from his waiting room
excerpt from “The Hindrances of a Householder”
By Jennifer BartlettJennifer Bartlett performs an excerpt from "The Hindrances of a Householder" at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Grease & Salt
By Jeanann VerleeI finish a small hot plate of grease & salt, & push the scraped-clean plate across the counter for someone else to scrub / this, I say I have paid for but it doesn't fit
Til the Taste of Free in Our Mouths (Brown Baby Lullaby)
By Heidi Andrea Restrepo RhodesWake. Wake.
These the nights we sing. These the folds,
unborn reverie, ambition marbled mud & shine,
raging anthem born like diamonds out darkest ash & rain
from Autobiography/Anti-Autobiography
By Jennifer Bartlettto walk means to fall
to thrust forward
to fall and catch
the seemingly random
is its own system of gestures
The Last New Year’s Resolution
By Kazumi ChinThe very last mammoth was just like the others,
except more lonely. The very last tortilla chip
makes me feel guilty.The very last line
of the poem changes everything about
Love at First Sight
By Kathi WolfeIn an elevator trapped
between the fifteenth and sixteenth
floor of her apartment building,
Sunday morning, Elizabeth, her cane