Public Republic

Molly Weinberg (this poem was written while she was in camp during World War II) Foto: Allie_Caulfield I am the Jewish Press Agency, I know all sorts of things about the Lager, Everything from primary sources, From the best informed places, Perhaps you doubt this? Listen to the latest camp report.

Bobbi Dawn Rightmyer Photo: mattwi1s0n I’m so distorted and wavy, not at all serene My thoughts are captured like the curves in tempered glass Frosted over, trapped in dark, trapped in light Always my own, and trapped inside my head Why can’t others see as I do, the rapidly changing world The dangerous times in […]

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: Robert S.Donovan Without laboratories, without conservatories, without observatories, the small town sighs in the afternoon; pears are dropping down through people’s dreams and the town clock is struck dumb at ten to five, like a calf gaping at the men in bloodstained aprons. The mosque used to be the tallest building here,

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: glitter feet At night, against the curtains so many moths are beating their wings, their silver dust tracing rows of knots, writing down my most enticing dream.

Donal Mahoney Photo: sir_mervs After 30 years together, Carol tells me late one evening in the manner of a quiet wife that I have yet to write a poem about her, something she will never understand in light of all those other poems she says I wrote

Simon Perchik Photo: zedzap I listen the way bells widen for petals :my fingers climbing in a circle and the sky I thought was lost –your lips already wings, folded back covered with rock cracking open and the storm-drenched spark means nothing.

Drew Logan Photo: simon.monk Blind Homer sat by the door Ulysses bought him drinks… Until the other Greeks arrived

Mariana Velichkova Photo: *~Dawn~* You will move on with your life like nothing happened You will continue to laugh and smile like nothing happened You will meet new people and make new friends like nothing happened And still you can’t forget about it that, which never happened…

Susan Christerson Brown The inspiration for When the Bough Breaks fell at our feet when an enormous branch broke away from a nearby royal paulownia tree and crashed to the ground. This shock of a gift came to us during our group’s writing retreat at Hopscotch House in Kentucky during the summer of 2007. We […]

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: jenny downing In the morning, when I brush my hair looking in the mirror, he is reading his newspaper, Many days in a row I keep telling him my incessantly recurring dreams of the city of white walls and a dreadfully hollow frame, of the city of Breton and immensely alluring lilies […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: lepiaf.geo Thomas said you can’t go home again but I did for my sister and the christening of her first. Everyone, on folding chairs, against the whitewashed basement walls, was there for ham and beef and beer, the better bourbons, music, argument and talk. Maura came; she hadn’t married. Paddy, fist around […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer The Spare Tire is constantly afraid that one day it will be his turn to start carrying the weight of the car in which he has been riding. Once a while back he whispered his fears to the windshield wipers but in silent judgment they just shook their heads.

Eric Sutherland Photo: alicepopkorn ( in and out ) I can see you need a lifeboat a set of strong arms wrapped around you one brave hand reaching up from the abyss

Stanislava Stanoeva Photo: karavelov I stand and watch the stars sending away their distant past I live amongst physical laws which no one has seen yet I read fortunes on cut down boles when and how will be born the Messiah trees spring up so innocent and then become crosses for the brave the day’s […]

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: s.e.re Now I feel easy because I expect nothing. The roughly polished glass of the North Sea is far off, yet through a roundabout way reaching the equator. Africa (blue nomads among men-eating sands) a week ago lent its back to a Leonid shower: stars fell piercing through hot and cold atmospheric […]

Eric Sutherland Photo: kevindooley I make my way a joyous escape to the jagged cliff-crowned doorway to the mountains here water shapes every surface with a wavy swirling motion like fingerprints left by a great ancient ocean each rock face bears these marine tattoos

Simon Perchik Photo: Alejandra Mavrovski Because there’s only one East loneliness seems a natural, you sit the way astronomers focus mirrors and your radio all night picking up moons, planets old songs from the 40’s –your hand never leaves the dial even to brush away the dim light fallen across the table.

JoAnn LoVerde-Dropp Photo: zappowbang I’ll sit here reading until they wake and tie small knots along a string of the nubby quiet kept for quiet’s sake. I’ll sit here reading until they wake breathy syllables loosed in their sway by now words stacked high and teetering but I’ll sit here reading until they wake and […]

Roger Craik Photo: Johan Larsson Lust and all its urgent traffic gone and unimaginable now, I watch the daylight fading on the wall beyond her roundish arm, and thinly start to dream. I’m eighty headlamp-glaring miles from home where, side by side, the two decanters stand that used to be my grandparents’, now mine. I’d […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Снимка: jsome1 Often I Wish I Were a potato. Eyes opened in all directions. Unafraid of the cold earth. The difference between life and death for somebody.