Public Republic

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: shinealight Men, somehow, Don’t call forth memories in me. Diligent, obedient, Devoted. Counter clockwise.

Katherine Van Hook Gulley Photo: Koshyk He shoves his hands into his pockets, for they have no where else to go. The years of chalk dust and the smell of old volumes of Yates, made a powerful cocktail that he drank even in leisure.

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: jenny downing neither is she approaching nor is she going away in the August haze I am holding her with my eyes above the poppy field not daring to move lest I make the wind blowing by my dispensable thoughts

Simon Perchik Photo: qmnonic …the final piece tonight… and the Earth made whole –the announcer slows, signs off by lowering her voice, then Mahler to help her with the dead …will leave the air… for its underworld and we be swept over that silence, downstream, washed in a darkness that stays, has no breath or […]

Kerana Angelova Photo: Oliver Jules In the backpack she arranges a book with poems by Debelianov between its pages a dry orange sun from a marigold a broken photograph from childhood in sepia tone instead of a face a circle of light halo of untidy thin hair like a bundle of bindweed

Roger Craik Photo: HAMED MASOUMI Although he doesn’t know it, these days are the last Of his marriage. Perhaps he’s reading now On his side of the bed, beneath his lamp, while you Peruse the book of myths my father bought Second-hand, in England, twenty years ago. His name is written in the front, in […]

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s interview with poet Barbara Crooker Barbara Crooker is the author of more than 625 poems published in over 1925 anthologies, books, and magazines. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards, such as the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize. A twenty-six time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she was nominated for the […]

Yassen Vassilev Photo: kwerfeldein the one who gives birth to himself hardly suffers from oedipus complexes hardly knows electra closely he crawls as a snake out of the ground and evil omens thrive around

Ivan Hristov Photo: Cane Ludico Rosso For Vladimir Levchev And we were sitting there somewhere in our little country, in our little neighborhood, in our apartment building. We were sitting silently and drinking. And then we talked.

Richard Luftig Photo: byrion In late November, the bank of autumn closes its doors for the year, calls in outstanding loans, issues certificates of deposit not redeemable until May and bearing no interest in our survival. Love falls

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s interview with Heather Derr-Smith Heather Derr-Smith was born in Dallas, Texas but spent most of her childhood in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She earned her MFA in Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1998. Her first book, “Each End of the World” was published by Main Street Rag Press in 2005. Her second book, […]

Dean Crawford Photo: b1gw1ght The first time I visit my father’s grave, I apologize to him for not being a better son. He apologizes to me for not being a better father. I have a difficult time growing up. My father tells me who I should be or who I could be, but he isn’t […]

Stanislava Stanoeva Photo: lepiaf.geo birds flew away before dawn the sky remained airless the black stork got stranded on the horizon – a dark ship of happiness I was watching the sky crumbled like bread crumb by crumb the first drops fell tomorrow is the first day of snow as white as all storks Translation […]

Tanya Kolyovska Photo: Mzelle Biscotte Children With eyes like wastelands In scraped out faces, swirled Away from our innocence, In the outskirts of the world.

Bozhana Apostolova Photo: Just SallyRye Am I alive? I asked my body, which, having grown bigger with the years, felt in its bones the most delicious feast of worms digging through the earth. Am I alive? I asked my heart. (To make it hear me, I knocked with fingers somewhere on my left side.) The […]

Simon Perchik Photo: jenny downing At the end each dancer darkens bends through somewhere shallow and fronds floating on stage: the dam can’t hold and we are left to swim upstream, barely enough water to remember where –the dancers still clear, precise, scrambled the way a nightmare must sense how makeshift it is, weighs almost […]

Drew Logan Photo: foxypar4 I encountered Molly Peacock for the first time years ago on a bus in downtown Manhattan. She was driving. No! No! Please do not think she was driving the bus. There was a placard on the interior wall of the bus above the seats where they normally put advertising. It had […]

Stanislava Stanoeva Photo: jtravism to feed silence to the water so to tread it softly how many steps measure the words on the endless road to someone to walk, not breathing, the steep slope not wishing to reach the others and water calls you by name to sate the drowned one inside Translation from Bulgarian: […]

Jerry Ratch Photo: iowa_spirit_walker The line of the unemployed wrapped back on itself like an accordion pleat and extended all the way across a great hall and you could see the faces of them, bluish and drawn under the dim florescent lighting First in line were laid-off bees weeping with their wings hanging down dragging […]

Cheryl Snell Photo: Jaci Berkopec The ritual keeps us breathing from biopsy to biopsy. The lump out, or the whole breast; changing skylines of loss. In the early days, disaster trumped disease, but there was only so much to say about a car smashed on tracks, a honeymoon in a hurricane. At some point, I […]