New & Featured

  • Without Her
    “her fine long tail waving a thin farewell/as both flew away from my life.” | by Katharyn Howd Machan
  • Back When Water Was an Elephant
    “since we couldn’t just walk across a lake,/the bed of it cracked now, bed of it dust,//dance partner of the wind” | by Rob Carney
  • Early Morning Rain
    “The dragonfly tilted its wings, curved its tail, / Your fingers as thin as a pier’s posts.” | by Nguyễn Quyén
  • My Story
    “if flowers fruit / there will be seeds of pure tears.” | by Ý Nhi
  • Mama Ana Paula Also Writes Poetry
    “I looked at her / back, strong like hairy bear that kills / a bull even when she’s drunk, and I understood:” | by Hu Xudong
  • Les Negres de Paris
    “…Every back, / it seems, is a blood neighbor” | Kwame Dawes
  • The Lesser Gods
    “But what about all the modest / neglected deities–the overlooked” | by Ellen Bass
  • Girl on a Liner
    “I’m standing/on the edge of nothing, with a handkerchief,” | by Emily Berry
  • A Hint
    “high into the air— / a song to slice the sky open, so he sang” | by Michael Trocchia
  • On the Streets of Hanoi
    “and the outsized appetites/I am shedding bit by bit” | by Katherine Towler
  • Petri Dish
    “The dish confines, / efficiently clasps without limbs.” | by Laura Hogan
  • Light
    “I have apprenticed myself to light,/to the way it moves through the world” | by Emily Portillo
  • The Duck Pond
    “The pond rises and sways, wind-rippled/a gelatinous mirror ball waiting to fall” | by Daniel Zeiders
  • Sunporch
    “Our house was a seabed of alien vines/reaching to touch the windowsills.” | by Emily Leithauser
  • The Daughter
    “Yet, to love her this way is to love the blue of distances” | by Jody Rambo
  • Listening to Michael Jackson in a Closet
    “my son/can recognize Michael’s voice/anywhere” | by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
  • Smallmouth
    “It demands to be/ known. The gnats/ in their conductor’s/ dance.” | by Jordan Pérez
  • Shell
    “The men’s experiment: to see if the righthand / claw, removed, might grow back.” | by Jordan Pérez
  • One Heaven
    “the nighttime grass/at eight years old,/run through with/starlight” | by K.T. Landon
  • Lambing Season
    “I knew better than to protest/but my shoulders sloped/like the sides of the valley” | by Laura Voivodeship
  • Midday
    “were almost twenty-five and twenty-eight:/even the connection on the phone was faint” | by Emily Leithauser
  • A Night in Madina
    “The stranger didn’t eat much/and she didn’t dance/and she didn’t remove her plastered shoes” | by Brian Gyamfi
  • The Tree Carries Water
    “Dandelions pass where I used to live./The gardener lets go of the river, the water whispers” | by Brian Gyamfi
  • The Valley
    “I took the boat out every morning, / allowing my hands to skim/the shimmering sky” | by Lauren Aliza Green
  • Pack Your Bags
    “In no time, he cannot/ see too far into himself, so full he is, so dull” | by Anna Leahy
  • Navigation by Falling Stars
    “Of course, some lives/ burn hotter or brighter than others” | by Anna Leahy
  • Gloss
    “No one is a machine of perpetual motion./ There’s more to it—to us” | by Anna Leahy
  • The Hidden Springs
    “I have a feeling for a moment that the elk is God—/ a god that we can watch.” | by Sarah Maclay
  • Art Deco Sonnet
    “O sleekness, O pizzazz, O mirrors, O chrome,/O remnant inklings of a light-struck world” | by Jacqueline Osherow
  • Ghazal Season
    “Once, I wrote a ghazal trimmed in gold,/ to mirror the implausible” | by Jacqueline Osherow
  • Cochlea
    “The murkiness, the smog, the thickened haze/ in me are hard to love.” | by Jehanne Dubrow, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • The Usual Suspects or a Chronological List of the Ways Men Have Referred to my Breasts:
    “They’re my favorite part of you, Mama,/ my son says, pressing into them hard” | by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • Silence in Syria
    “Melt the ink into my hands/ like the metal of a tank being welded./ Use this newspaper as a rag” | by Seif-Eldeine, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • Exit
    “On every door in this village/ there are last notes left by families/ crossing the sea to another land.” | by Rasaq Malik, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • The Starlight in Syria
    “The wounded know stars are a furnace/ for mankind’s sins. The wounded curl themselves/ into a ball of starlight” | by Seif-Eldeine, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • I sat next to Adele on a plane and she bought me a house
    “I’d gotten a fluky upgrade, moved from 38C to 4B./ She— a stranger still, was already sitting, a silver/ studded handbag at her feet,” | by Patrick Holloway, 2021 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • monarchs are the communication medium for when i die
    “a tiny sun in my belly quieted by sweet tea & new tales” | by Phil SaintDenisSanchez, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • Pluto Retires(And During The Exit Interview Sits Near a Wide Window While Watching a Violence of Florida Rainbow Wreckage Unleash Its Storm Over an Empty Magic Kingdom)
    “Time to hand in your costume child./ – So much has happened here.” | by Michael Martin, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist
  • Wheel
    “How I loved saying I was deeply skeptical of the adverb, very/ but then I got run over by a truck” | by Michael Martin, 2020 C.P Cavafy Finalist
  • We Were the Kind
    “to tell it true we’d say/ we don’t know what it is/ we’re nowhere near the end of.” | by Michael Martin, 2020 C.P. Cavafy Finalist