The Telescope

A great ‘voice’ is merely a great voice. Maybe it modulates. Softens or moves up the register. Terrific. Now what? The problem with voice is that you work so hard to find it. Then you find it and there is no where else for it to be. No longer searching for voice, you...

Review by Sam Schmidt One joy of this unusual book by Rebecca May Johnson is the challenge of deciding what kind of writing it is. Not entirely philosophy, not quite social or literary criticism, not completely memoir, not fully poetry—even while it is all these...

We went into the cypress and black water to read manuscripts and when we came back there was a whole conversation about blurbs. As usual, we missed it and just did our own thing. We’re not against love and gold stars and trying to to land teaching jobs and reading...

When we arrived at the camp they pulled us off the buses and made us do push-ups in the parking lot. The asphalt was hot and tar stuck to our noses. They made fun of our clothes and took them away from us. They shaved our heads until little white scars showed through,...

Once a book contract is signed, the rush for blurbs is so rushed. Especially for a debut collection. As if the years of creating would still depend on green lights, even after publication. As if each book were a traffic intersection. As if it still needed whistle...

Content Warning: Suicide Originally published at Measure Review In Memory of Jim Simmermanby John Philip Drury “Ever the best of friends,” your letters ended,great expectations for a wave of yearsthat promised more reunions, correspondence.But all that’s over. The...

Waiting, one feels timelike space the way one speaks of a tree,meaning not, as here in this yard,the fat trunk of a beech that bulgesbefore its branches beginto branch -- meaning rather the loss we hideby counting up: Up, the way the tree grows,or the way we speak of...

There was a knock and then there wasn't.There was a door and then there wasn't.There was a knock, a door....I follow your footprints across the wet grass.They lead to a river black as anthracite.And a boat without oars. Sleep is a desert that lets me return.The...

for John and Joe The blue-grey steeples of the pines,the lake's cold oval: our perception of these shapesmakes us particularly human.Like tourists living on the shoreof what really matters, we can lean backand say "These clouds are marble quarries."or, "Life would be...

Ok. It's Halloween. There's a knock on the door and it's your lover. Only it's not your lover, it's a short, fat kid wanting candy. But he knows your name and it's not your lover, it's your best friend. And she's with her lover, who is waiting in the car, a brand new...

He often imagined kissing her in the rain,in one of those romantic triumphs over adversity.Reclining with his back to the earth, he stares intothe sky as it plummets into itself; he decides the sky is his pieta, a woman in a blue robeswaddling the dark space of her...

It is Sunday. Where I live you get the New York Times at a tiny filling station whose habit it is to change brands of gasoline every so often. George's Exxon a few years ago. George's Texaco last summer. At present it is George's Co-Op Gasoline. George is a portly man...

suppose the soul is a stoneand not the holy cellophaneI've fancied it,and thus -- like the bodyshort of heat, strippedeven of the heart's flimsy flam--does not hover, waft, ascend,breastroke its wayinto a panoramic hereafter(flourish of French hornsand the multitudes...

So much death in the room but no people--the candles burned down to their stumps,the food untouched, the meat growing coldin its grease. Under the couch, the cat playswith a mole it dragged in from the barn,The mole crawls off. The cat drags it back.If cats could...

Darkness, then, was the dark wool to my nestof light. I would tip back intothe emptiness beyond my rim of pillowsand let my head drop, my vision weave--a narrow stalk brushing back and forthacross the ceiling. Then, as now,I'd sift the risky valence the room's corners...

There is a corridor of lightthrough the pines, lint from the Spanish Moss.There is the fallen sunlike ice and the twit of hidden birdsin our common backyards,snakes threading the needles.I walk the block pastKrogers with its exhausted wiveshovering over bins of frozen...

Somewhere beyond the bounds of sleepmy bones undressed, rising from their fleshto become this selfless, falling dust. It was then I wanted earswith which to hear the familiar criesof those children building me. And of course I had no eyesonly this unfailing bandage of...

Poem of Mercy No one poem is enough. Noone poem contains the mercyI seek, the forgiveness. There are nowords that can approachthe tufts of fine black hairon the backs of doctor's handsas he dialed my home that nightfrom one of the side rooms,then choked, looking out...

In 1982, Lynne Cawood Howard wrote the perfect coronavirus poem. The Miner's Son My father died in his fortieth winterwhen the black scars that were his lungsgave in with one final breath.Though I have not reached thirty, I wake up coughing and hear the rattle in my...

Check out Alison Turner's review of Julia's latest book: https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/2020/01/wendell-cometothex

How can someone from half way across the world and growing up in a completely different culture assemble imagery in such a way that you understand completely what is being said? You have felt the same way and marvel at how they move you with their melancholy. But...

The Distance As seen in Days of Summer Gone, Galileo Press, 1990 Two women are hugging each other goodbyeOn the sidewalk in the tree-shadowOf a late spring afternoon. It is notSexual, though both are beautiful.And though both are tall and litheUnder their dark hair,...

Man Stabbed in Heart Runs 3 Blocks Somebody died out there. Right there outside Morton's window overlooking Georgetown across the Potomac where he and Emily will be moving this coming weekend into a $900-a-month townhouse that Emily claims they can well afford now...

This lunatic atom bomb has succeeded in rousing the people of all nations to the highest point of unanimous moral dudgeon; great numbers of persons are frightened who never really had much cause to be frightened before. This world has always been a desperately...

First Two, Last Two is a game we play where we take the first two paragraphs and the last two paragraphs of a piece. A Friend's Death He gets a disease and suffers from it and dies. Before that Kirt visits him in the hospital several times. Once when Chris went in for...

A thousand snaps for author Matthew Graham for being chosen the Indiana Poet Laureate 2020-2021. https://www.in.gov/arts/3013.htm

The Geography of HomeMatthew GrahamGalileo Press (South Carolina) 2019 Reviewed by Roy Bentley Excuse my needing to begin by saying, and bluntly, that some books are just sage-calm. Matthew Graham’s The Geography of Home is such a book. It maps Imagination’s...

 October 3 to October 24, when the beach rentals are price reduced, and the municipal pool is closed but not covered up, and it’s still a month before Thanksgiving, and the threat of new syllabi is long gone, and it’s cold then it’s warm and if it’s cloudy it...

To Francis Jammes In a manner, we all pray. So I've walked out at 6 a.m.into the sound and look of things.Arc lamps hum in the city park,and accepting resistance,swallows lift in a sudden breeze.What presses against me now?Francis Jammes, you prayed to be...

by Derek Berry Texas Crude, the debut short story collection by Thomas Kearnes, offers an intimate portrait of gay lives in East Texas. In equal measures erotic, heartbreaking, and rousing, the collection invites us into his characters’ inner lives, whether they be...

We've added The Book Tavern in Augusta, GA--a great Indie bookstore. When I visited to ask if they'd carry Matthew Graham's The Geography of Home as well as our current issue of Free State Review the manager said maybe, but first they wanted to...

Our poetry consultant, Edgar Gabriel Silex, says: "Walt Whitman was a racist who called African Americans 'baboons.' White scholars attempt to dismiss his racism by claiming 'everyone back then was racist.' Here's a note to all those who buy into that scholarly...

Bitter Exercise Sit up, lie down, sit up, lie down, runaround and around the blockuntil a little of myself is leftat each corner. The dogs know it and try to help,nipping at my feet to speed me up, snarling my path into wider, aching circles.The best pain's...

Alice in the Rabbit's House I'll call you Alice, unborn childrumbling in my sleep, productof a distant summer's urge. Now I amstuffed to the gills, a house puffed upby someone's mischievous lips.It all happened so fast-- the closing trees,the shrinking sky, the wrong...

The Invention of the Snowman Somewhere beyond the bounds of sleepmy bones undressed, rising from their fleshto become this selfless, falling dust. It was then I wanted earswith which to hear the familiar criesof those children building me. And of course I had no...

Occasionally Making Sense When I was twenty, in college and living on a street that was a row of broken apartment buildings, my brother and I returned to our apartment from a game of racquetball to sit in the living room and argue whether we should buy a quart of...

Building a House Here are the plans taped to the side of the old house, taped to the wall which will be the last to go. I have a hatchet for chopping; I have a radio for entertainment. Last week they sent a man around with a questionnaire. One of the questions was:...

Sister Mary Appassionata To The Ornithology Class Birds can be a mortal danger.If you doubt me walk around downtownunder cooing skyscrapers, brooding statuesand look up. Gulls and crows learnfrom parents how to drop whelkson jagged rocks to shatter their...

The Desire to be Personal: 1 The desire to be personal is what gets me:to walk down the street and not to vanish.O I don't know but I'll assume I'm talking to you,talking although that plugto your heart is what I'm afterbut let's take care of basics.Some food, OK, so...

The Drowning Man The manchild wrapped in my armscould be a woman I'm not in love with. Even in these half-hearted obsessionsI get carried away, I can't concentrate. I come down on the open mouthand for a moment the rain comes downoutside a dark roomfar, far away. But...

Nightblind When the train's headlight veersto kill my right eye, I panicand the road goes black.There are no white-line boundariesas the radio croons "I can'tstop lovin' you," so I askeach truck that passes to rescue meback on course. Aiming for their small red...

Black Wing  To have each understanding of the river represented By starry night, the thing by itself.  To have a time when the black glasses sit so silently in the midnight sun the mind may as   well turn away from them as well to them. To have the absolute question...

French Movies  In memory of Patrick Dewaere  1. A roasted chicken placed on a white cloth. In the movie it is still sitting there. You forget to eat it. We go outside to find glass bottles smashed behind our cars.  2. In some men, the future is written  with a...

The Inviolate Carolyn, New Orleans seems so far away...tonight  the valley's lights keep a planetary distance...there is  only the shallow comfort of gestures left  like dropping more ice in the gin knowing, as it melts,  that I will fail to make you feel I...

Twice First Light   New Born Horse In winter before light it's impossible to guess what I'll knock into next. A lamp in the shape of a ship goes down, its lightbulb in a short white passion. I love the frail tintinnabulations of a broken bulb so appropriate for...

In Gratitude for Talk for John and Joe The blue-grey steeples of the pines, the lake's cold oval: our perception of these shapes makes us particularly human. Like tourists living on the shore of what really matters, we can lean back and say "Those clouds are marble...

Here’s a poem by Martha Collins called “Waiting.” It begins “Waiting, one feels time/ like space, the way one speaks of a tree,/ meaning not, as here in this yard…..

Here’s a poem by Rita Dove called “Watching Last Year at Marienbad at Roger Haggerty’s House in Auburn, Alabama.” It begins “There is a corridor of light/through the pines, lint from the Spanish Moss./ 
There is the fallen sun… 

Here’s a poem by Norman Dubie called “Provence.” It begins “The knight walks along the deep brook/Nibbling at a rusted tiger-lily…

Here’s a poem by Denis Johnson called “Our Feature by the Waters.” It begins “The tide is out. The sea stinks like a sewer./ An airplane lays itself down like a hand…

Here’s a poem by David Rivard called “Double Indemnity.” It begins “All day the rain/ washes down and races…

Here’s a poem by Susan Ludvigson called “Departures.” It begins, “The dreams accumulate. / In one I see you rowing across / a wide river …”