Public Republic

Michael Lee Johnson Photo: ToOliver2 A Métis Indian lady, drunk — hands blanketed as in prayer, over a large brown fruit basket naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard inside — approaches the Edmonton, Alberta adoption agency. There are only spirit gods inside her empty purse.

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: benandbarnet Like an ant that hauls a crumb but has forgotten where the ant-hill is, she stares at details, then cleans the sink very carefully. These things that happen in films, who invents them?

Martha Gehringer Photo: gmehender Velvet blue behind— sheer white before— and rain             like a curtain                          pulled.             The furze                                waves            its fuzzy paw.

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: In a N.Y. State Of Mind To my grandmother and yours ‘My grandmother and I got on with each other without meaning to. I didn’t mean to say that.’ ‘I remember how she kneaded and kneaded with her arthritic hands while I hung around asking her to give me a little piece […]

David Chorlton Photo: striatic With nowhere to go, I go nowhere but forward along the path and turn left at the pavement with one foot leading another until I reach the Avenue where the neighbourhood becomes a city. Now I’m invisible

Charlotte Pence Photo: _boby + boby Babe, next time Don’t schlep a heifer Up to the stars To hide her.

David Chorlton Photo: Wolfgang Staudt One road is named after The Devil but you won’t meet him there; he’s in Nogales putting scorpions in Lucite for souvenirs by which to remember the sting of the sun as you pass from being poor to being illegal. Another runs underground

Barbara Sabol Photo: hmr The haiku in Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku blend a distinctly city-savvy content with the nature-oriented perspective of traditional haiku. A true son of haiku lineage, George’s haiku are sensory-bound sketches, alive with the sounds, smells, textures and colors of the city as a unique phenomenon in the natural world. […]

Mariana Velichkova Photo: hickory hardscrabble You have told me: Your heart is a bird. On my question What kind?

Colleen Harris Photo: The U.S. Army So still, you couldn’t have been anything other than hunkered down, waiting to weather the next barrage. I was sure of it. You were tucked tight, and dead men sprawl the way men do after mind-numbing sex.

Changming Yuan Photo: Clearly Ambiguous To demonstrate their heliotropism They all keep saluting To the summer sun, constantly moving

Colleen Harris Photo: Capture Queen ™ “Do you know how they say get back in Arabic?” He flicks the safety off, shouts “CLICK!” and waits for us to laugh.

Colleen Harris Photo: The U.S. Army This poem takes liberties with the truth. He was not thinking about how the IED sounded like God bellowing after stubbing a toe. He was not whispering his sister’s names aloud while still deaf from the blast. It is true that the shrapnel shredded the mail, including a letter […]

Changming Yuan Photo: blmurch (for Liu Yu and other mothers) A line this is for my mother’s birthday A birth line for my mother’s day A mother for the birthday of a line A celebration of my mother’s line of birth Mother, I will line your birth with celebration I will day a line with […]

Changming Yuan Photo: modenaroid I open, you Close, or you Open, I Close, either my umbrella Or yours To keep both ourselves Dry from this cold Rain, we have To share The one And the same umbrella, if we Must walk Hand in hand

Colleen Harris Photo: Eddie 07 They are so poor, he says, they sit on rough patches of dirt stacking rocks to pass the time while goats scavenge the garbage. He says he watched a boy shoot a man for taking a rock from the boy’s side of the mountain. It was just a rock, he […]

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: fdecomite from My Life in Squares (forthcoming from Smokestack Books, 2010) We were playing cards with God when he trumped my king with a two. ‘But God, according to the rules you cannot do this’ I brandished my fan of cards. ‘Then think up of some explanation’ he said. And dealt again.

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: Swami Stream from My Life in Squares (forthcoming from Smokestack Books, 2010) The weed in the pot gesticulates like the first and only guest at a birthday party. The other seeds never showed up. Silently they refused to take part in the fair of transformations – thesis, antithesis, synthesis; even their theses […]

Dimana Ivanova Photo: LaPrimaDonna “And I saw a New sky and a New land, which were governed by truth!” “Revelation” by Ioan Bogoslov She called from America and said: “I conceived my child alone!” From the air, still wet in space, caught by the ocean’s breath, the wind through which you sent me kisses, songs, […]

Debra Fox It is Barry George’s palpable regard for the cast of characters who inhabit the urban landscape in his haiku collection, Wrecking Ball and Other Urban Haiku, that makes it so powerful. Whether he is describing a conductor, a window washer, an accused teen, or a homeless man, George suggests they are all deserving […]