Public Republic

Roger Conner Jr. Photo: fauxto digit The stage set tempest hurled wet against the walls of a small townhouse

Simon Perchik Photo: jimkster A plain paper bag yet in its night this popcorn needs more salt — a fragrant grip and I am Hercules muscle-bound, shaking the screen the actors giants, grotesque

Bozhana Apostolova Photo: dawnzy58 Everything starts from there – from the dipped soggy brush: swaying wheaten in the plowed up ocher wind gust, a blue song above them and a wing gone mad with the wild mixture of wind and white…

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: glitter feet its white under the snow its red under the umbrella I am craving for; your smile – an olive at the bottom of the glass, on the edge of the morning in my drying lips I am craving for… And he delves wells into the words away from my desires […]

Kenneth Pobo Photo: pinksherbet “Poets these days are so narcissistic.” I like staring into a still pond—even when a bird toilets my head, I think this message is from the universe, from God. But God is busy staring at a pond in another county and has to face grumpy angels who claim they dust Heaven’s […]

Joy Ladin A variation on “Ein Leben,” by Dan Pagis Photo: amyrod1 I’m standing at the window, a young woman, I can’t remember what age or so my slumping shoulders say

Vladimir Levchev Photo: selvig On the beach before dark the herring gulls, old men in white with long shadows, strut and chat with each other. We don’t know their language. But we listen.

Brian Russell Photo: jesse.millan Maybe it’s just as well, she says, though I don’t really believe her. The birch are all gone now, I say, missing their papery white.

Reviewed by Charlotte Pence Marilyn Kallet, author of fourteen books, opens her anticipated selected poems with “Jonah on Oprah,” a dramatic monologue that epitomizes how through wit, rhythm, and imaginative metaphors her poems arrive at insight: “I’ve lived through gut-wrenching / remorse, got swallowed up by it. // Now I understand I can’t run / […]

Barry George Photo: The Wandering Angel cold train station – I’m bundled up like FDR at Yalta

Claudia Bierschenk Photo: roomiccube she watched his cigarette consume itself as he mumbled explanations about economic circumstances

Suzanne Nielsen Photo: frenkieb/ Neil Young Ellen Alphabe lost all their stock in GM when the bailout was denied, however they still believed in air bags, tune-ups and tinted glass, standards that made American cars so special.

Cathy Nickola Photo: helmet13 Because in my bed we must linger Because it is night, or afternoon but a hiccup Because we cocoon, we feign Because the power will fail, but I have a candle Because the cats sleep

Paul McGlamery Photo: clairity   unbridled wind crammed to the brim with the buzz of ghosts

David Chorlton Photo: scfiasco Dear Isabelle, I’m writing as one who can’t find his way to a culture he’d want to check into as he would an old hotel where the rooms hold stories about the guests who slept in them and the lobby has a table overloaded with out-of-date magazines

Joy Ladin Photo: aussiegall Pirouhettes Between future and past, A spiraling ribbon of red, a girl In ballet class, A dance, a beautiful dance You cannot hope to master.

David Chorlton Photo: That Guy Who’s Going Places Dear Shivarov, or do you like Comrade Shivarov? So much has changed since you were the expert for literary matters in the case of Osip Mandelstam. I can imagine the room as one that cut his nerves to shreds as you stood before him with the poem

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: twoblueday In the most deserted area of the beach among the rows of thatched umbrellas with an open book in my lap I run my eyes over the pages “mother, in your womb you had prepared my dead mask”

James Jason Dye Photo: DerrickT I am disposable paper, filled with dense vapor folded into being here.

Theo Edmonds Photo: TellmeBoo! You know where life is taking you. You think you know. You want to know. You try to know. You never actually know – You see someone on the subway. You meet eye to eye.