Letter of Long Grass
We urge whomever responsible
To address this matter very
Urgently; there is danger,
And if not addressed
A team must be dispatched.
Look--let bees tangle
The leggy oregano, let spiders
Spin in wild blades of rough;
Let each wasp bring
Its blessing of sharp attention
To heal what has been mown.
Seaweed
I.
Kelp, I learn at the aquarium,
have holdfasts to anchor them,
stipes like stems, bladders to lift
blades to the sun. I try to trace
a line to its end, but it moves
like memory, bleeds into other
lines, and the whole view sways,
dizzying. Fish cruise between
dark and light, thoughts in salt-water.
II.
For these two women to harvest
seaweed, they must venture
into bitter surf with sharp
knives, wrestle the living ropes,
cut them free, twirl them
into baskets that they then
must keep from the sea.
They load the boat heavy,
steer home while the sea pulls.
III.
We ignore storm warnings, afraid
we’ll miss our chance. Vacations are
rare as reunions, and we’re taut
cables stretched from ship
to foundering ship. We arrive at a beach
piled with seaweed, ugly and shocking.
But what’s familiar about this smell?--
natural as chemical signals, as beach,
storm, the salvation of a weed
absorbing surge.
Assistant Editor Morgan O.H. McCune recently retired from Pittsburg State University in southeast Kansas. Now based in Topeka, she holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis (1991) and an M.L.S. from Emporia State University (2002). Her poems have been published in River Styx, Flint Hills Review, and other places.
At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
When I take her daughter
onto my hip in the Egypt room,
my cousin says babies are the best
tour guides if we will only follow
their eyes to the dizzying
spread of ceiling tiles, thin,
needle-sharp arms of lights
straining to us, the nearby slope of
some woman’s neck, the warmth
in her pale hands. And in the
gift shop, a tiny water wheel
turns and turns and turns. Her baby rejects
my two offered fingers in favor of her own
palm. She is everything she needs.
Mass Shooting
i go to Lucille
Clifton again, to
“the times.” on my bed
in a chiffon dress, soft
to the floor, i eat
chocolate-covered
pomegranate.
the body
can feel good things
too. we can make
a home here.
ear buds without music
muffle even the
silence. i am
so full and so hungry.
i eat in the bath.
i almost text
my ex. i am
lonelier
than i can ever remember
feeling.
i collage. i want
to finish, push,
make something. so I
make myself
stop. feelings
just have
to be felt.
it is hard to remain human
but we are, and
i am.
Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.
I drive to the city
to a park, which are different
in the city (city park), and sit
in sun that only looks warm
(because sometimes
things only look warm), and the guy
in the offroader next to me
gets a beer from his trunk
after a while and we sit
side-by-side in our cars, not acknowledging
each other, him drinking his beer
in a ballcap, me nursing a new album
on the radio, and the couple in the long grass
just ahead
is kicking a soccer ball
and trying cartwheels. I feel
as if there is nothing
I could more reasonably be doing
than watching the thin cat hunched
on the treacherous side of the railing
of a balcony across the street.
(I can’t know this,
but at home, my dog is yowling
at every pass of the neighbors
overhead. Who isn’t yowling
at things passing just overhead?)
You will ask which songs on this
new album were my favorite—always
the saddest ones. I wish I could connect
over easy, simple, human things, like the beer,
like the ballcap, like a soccer ball
and the sharp coolness of the grass
under-palm as I circle myself over it,
but the saddest songs are my favorites,
it must be agony and nothing else, and his beer
must be a sad beer, and his cap must be
to hide his tired eyes, and the couple must be
on their last attempt to reconcile, and
the cartwheels must be a frenzied swipe
at what is always just overhead.
Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.
Mr. Redbud
Mr. Redbud, I’m not sure how
well you can hear me anymore.
You’re the moon through a telescope.
I’d like to hang a plastic Easter
egg on each one of your limbs.
Oh Mr. Redbud, wait, wait,
and now you bud. To hell
with the rain, and to hell with your roots;
everything’s going to be okay.
Helloooo, Helloooo, Mr. Gravity,
are you there? I wanted to tell you
about the buzzards out at the farm.
They almost live on the pole out
by the old cellar. You could dive
in there during a storm, grab hard
to the ground and hang on.
Dear Mr. Red Dirt, you have ruined
the white canvas shirt, the one
with the chainsaw grease on the sleeve.
I fear putting it in the washer
with anything but jeans. Also,
you’ve eaten away the rubber soles
of my best go-to-hike boots,
though, I admit, burrs
stuck pretty bad in their thick laces.
I request restitution forthwith.
Oh, Grasshopper, how you hop
so fast into morning. Coffee
and laundry, the clean dishes,
maybe a poem. Oh Grasshopper,
when will you ever learn?
You took those ants too much to heart.
The freezers are full. Winter
is nearly over. Sing or snore,
come ‘a rain come ‘a rain come ‘a kinebo
kinebo sinebo karo saro
rattletrap pennywinkle popadoodle yellowbug
come ‘a rain come ‘a rain come ‘a kinebo,
and stretch your lean limbs slow,
hug the big trunk of a foreign tree,
have piccolo gelato, afternoon espresso
when you need to wake up.
The raked leaves will wait for tomorrow
or for the good and neighborly wind.
At last, Mr. Bigmouth
Bass, remember the time
we bobbed on our toes,
took stride against the current,
and rode the breakers into shore?
We’ve been king of the sea,
king of the pond and the shore.
Oh Mr. Bigmouth, let’s play
with the line and the pole,
let’s eat plates decorous
as ballrooms, one course
after the next, bubbles
for me, martini straight up
with olives, of course, for you.
Come on, Mr. Coldbones,
let’s all go to bed.
I’ve got the black kitty
that sleeps on your feet.
Come on, Mr. Coldbones,
let’s all go to sleep.
I’ve got the black kitty,
and that’s all that she said.
If you want to hear more,
you can sing it yourself.
This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals asTheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.
Moon Smoke
In the high southwest
beyond the cankering oak
above the third floor’s roof
between chimney and branches
I watch an oblate moon
fidget behind wisps of smoke
from the witch’s campfire.
Folks are tossing dust
into the coals; the smoke
rises like windswept clouds.
Somewhere a woman is dancing
in iron-hot shoes. She
is going to escape,
and the bright moon fades.
This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals asTheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.
The Gathering “There will be another eye, a strange one, beside
our own: unspeaking under its stony lid." –Paul Celan
When the old man comes dragging his sack,
the children run away from the fire.
Sparks snap and glide, then fade. Whole worlds
whistle and break. Even under the perigee moon,
the woods are dark. Moonlight berries soothe
and lure. Children run away from the fire!
The old man has come dragging his sack.
When he drops back into his crevice
and rock, he drags the deep sack behind him.
The gray stone of the third eye knows
in its slow blink every terror in our skulls.
Hands reach up
to cup us as we gather. Hands reach up,
but dumb, we run away from the fires.
This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals asTheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.
Self-Portrait in First Grade
Lucky child, we have been dreams together
with eyes bright as birthstone sapphires.
When we clasped hands in the white
muff, the rabbit’s fur sold us on its pleasure.
I was like nothing then I would ever be again.
The caterpillar I portrayed in kindergarten
in dyed green Keds was going to transform
into a bookish woman, at least that segment
connected to my feet. I know some
legs and arms went military or complacent,
took drugs, cancer-died, built machines.
We were the child the neighbors came
to take pictures of at the bus stop, blond-eyed
and blue or however that goes, perfected
in purple gingham like any mother’s favorite doll.
Did I mention patent leather?
This isn’t a brag, the hair and eyes,
the dress, the absolute black shoes
are symbols. Was I even there to wear them?
Imagine being welcomed like that child,
imagine her fear of entering the yellow bus alone,
imagine the flash of the portrait,
the not-yellow of her teeth, the blue bus number
pinned to the frilled pinafore.
I would like human frailty to amuse me;
I would like to stop her constant
disappointment. I am like the dog
who can’t stop biting at the flea, the one
whose skin welts up, the one who bleeds
from the actions of his own nails and teeth.
The child is going into the halls where one boy
always gets in trouble, where the teachers
rip off his cap to find his father
shaved him bald, where skin colors
don’t match and all hair doesn’t hang straight,
where she finds meanesses are cultivated,
where she learns to read the first word,
where in small chairs they strain to say it:
I, I, I.
This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals asTheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.
Cream-n-Green
Whereas, in front of the flowering dogwood entrance of that mobile homes park, the city owns an acre to sell; and
whereas, the planning commission has passed on its case to the city council; and
whereas, the requested rezoning reaffirms the city's into-the-city corridor plan, as amended; and
whereas, this landscape at the outskirts is neither prairie, farming, home, nor business; rather, it's like soda spilt on the dashboard, the can long since gone; and
whereas, the city and W__ Family Trust jointly marketed a 3-acre buffer along Lincoln Avenue to embed business, which would have tucked the park safely away; and
whereas, the city requested proposals in regional papers (without council approval) to redevelop the Lincoln Mobile Homes Park; and
whereas, this project is as senselessly sensible as an auto accident driven in the mind over and over: waves of AM Limbaugh drifting into and out of the swerves and over-corrections on the black-ice course of a curve; and
whereas, the Owner can close said park without city approval; and
whereas, in Ordinance 9697-22, the city ordained Caprock Corp. as developer, dependent upon resolving relocation for residents; and
whereas, the parties agree Caprock has agreed to pay off $500 to occupants of each trailer towed off; and
whereas, Caprock will build and maintain The Caprock Commons, a luxury student housing site, with their "cream-n-green" signature design; and
whereas, private deals take on the interior odor of a new car; and behind closed doors, there's a wish to move on and over like the drive in these interruptions, like the census taken when no one answers the hard knocks, and so on; and
whereas, the city has agreed to spend $150,000 to build a bike path to relieve traffic along Lincoln; and
whereas, access from Goodwin Street (the other side) will now be closed-off and an emergency access crash gate will be put up so privacy will be assured and so surrounding African-American neighborhoods will not be disrupted; and
whereas, Caprock has cited in their site plan that they save lots and lots of trees; and
whereas, the City Arborist recommends decorative fencing along the Goodwin side; and
whereas, the Federal Fair Housing Act directly conflicts with Caprock's "most important and strictly enforced rule:" One student per bedroom — which is now viewed strictly as a guideline for marketing purposes; and
whereas, more student housing is unneeded for the University except for the more luxurious kind, as stated in Caprock's marketing study and implied in their status elsewhere;
now therefore, be it ordained by the city council of the City of U__, Illinois, as follows:
that we shall collect a great amount of tax
dollars from The Caprock Commons;
that we shall transfer certain citizens
(and non-citizens), reconstituting
their home, and for now, only
for now, put off permanent
housing needs — all for the greater good.
Robert Manaster’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Birmingham Poetry Review, Image, Maine Review, Into the Void, and Spillway. His co-translation of Ronny Someck’s The Milk Underground was awarded the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation.
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals asTheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.
Dan Lau is a Chinese American poet. A Kundiman fellow, he is the recipient of scholarships and grants from The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Queer Cultural Center, and San Francisco Arts Commission. His poems have been published in Colorado Review, Bellingham Review, The Margins, Poem-a-Day, The Baffler and others. He resides on the unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone, also known as San Francisco. (Photo by Bethanie Hines)
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals asTheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.
Upon Watching Notre Dame Burn
I stood where Quasimodo rang his bells,
looked through painted glass like everyone else
for hundreds of years. We rode dinner boats
on the Seine to see the buttresses fly,
to wonder at Parisian medieval
Gothic architecture, ribbed vaulting, stone.
In the revolution, much was destroyed,
and now, as careless democracies fall,
again, a spark lights; the whole tinderbox
explodes, and structures collapse into ash.
It’s time for another change, but it is
devastating to watch history burn.
Astrophysical Singularity“…the block of stone can't be is because it never can
become was because it can't ever die or perish…”
–William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!
I am.
What was
before what is?
Ocean: heart beats a rising tide, awareness perceives liquid glass surface, reflecting light.
Sky: atmosphere runs through hurricanes and windless nights;
Spark: energy creating.
Earth: unfathomed particles fall, attract, force, push.
It is not only because we think.
It is not only because your atoms smash into mine.
We are also matter and energy that is a black hole:
question marks at the beginning and end,
a place before language that needs marking.
Maybe god is a placeholder, a __________
Remove the verb of being,
remove existence: dipping below the surface.
Without is, what?
Without golden light, without sapphire ocean,
without star strewn sky, how is poetry?
But something sparks from nothing.
Some new universe begins to be.
Undistinguished Miraculous
Our star is middle-aged and yellow.
The Milky Way galaxy, spiral and midsized,
sits in the middle of the Local Group
in the edge of the Virgo Supercluster,
not the center of our universe, not special
or even interesting, by astronomical standards.
Even if you are famous today,
what of the next thousand years?
The next million?
The body turned creator pushes
new life out into the universe.
That baby is just as miraculous as every other baby,
two hundred fifty-five born every minute,
three hundred fifty-three thousand born every day.
Our ordinariness is our bond.
We were created,
moving against entropy,
and we have only a flash of time
to make
a life
a light.
Katherine D. Perry is a Professor of English at Perimeter College of Georgia State University. Her poetry is published in many journals, and her first volume,Long Alabama Summer, was released in December 2017. She also co-founded the GSU Prison Education Project, which teaches courses in prisons.
This selection was selected by editors Laura Lee Washburn and Morgan O.H. McCune.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 