Public Republic

Changming Yuan Photo: Auntie K When I heard that bold yawing Knocking at my double-glazed window A sound in the mind echoed From an unknown voice

Michael Lee Johnson Photo: Bruce Guenter Leaves, a few stragglers in December, just before Christmas, some nailed down crabby to ground frost, some crackled by the bite of nasty wind tones. Some saved from the matchstick that failed to light. Some saved from the rake by a forgetful gardener. For these few freedom dancers left […]

Michael Lee Johnson Photo: fazen Soft nursing 5 solid minutes of purr paws paddling like a kayak competitor against ripples of my 60 year old river rib cage- I feel like a nursing mother but I’m male and I have no nipples. Sometimes I feel afloat. Nikki is a little black skunk, kitten, suckles me […]

Bozhana Apostolova Photo: apesara Everywhere turds, turds, turds… It takes time to become manure. Translated from Bulgarian by Valentin Krustev and Donna Martell

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: Pink Sherbet Photography Everywhere nets of people support each other and allow no leaks. The impulse runs in closed figures and looks good, but it isn’t.

Donal Mahoney Photo: bsabarnowl Rogers Park, Chicago This brilliant winter morning finds waves of snow on every lawn and red graffiti dripping from the walls of Temple Mizpah once again as down the street stroll ancient men who every morning shuffle here for prayer.

Mariana Velichkova Photo: Niffty.. We are honest and decent reasonable, chaste again frigidly faithful almost sterile burdened by rules and pain

Dimana Ivanova Translated from Bulgarian to English by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Photo: wili I want to weave you in my hair, pack you in my skin, slip you on my finger, like a wound from a wedding ring.

Michael Lee Johnson Photo: weglet Gingerbread lady, no sugar or cinnamon spice; years ago arthritis and senility took their toll. Crippled mind moves in then out, like an old sexual adventure blurred in an imagination of fingertip thoughts. Who remembers the characters? There was George, her lover, near the bridge at the Chicago River: she […]

Kristin Dimitrova Photo: mikebaird No, he wasn’t fat or skinny, tall or short, he wasn’t good or evil, but only neutral, like a geometric point – no mass, but how it pierces the sheet.

Simon Perchik Photo: claire1066 No one gets hurt, you pump into a parachute, cup one hand to float down, the other as if water could rub off the way the sky still gushes from the once blue Earth and your sleeve tearing apart

David Chorlton Photo: Matt From London Before we know it, the subject changes. Nobody intended to bring this up, but suicide slips into the room as an uninvited visitor so we let it happen, make a place, and sit back as it dominates the conversation. We all have a story. There was the performance artist […]

Donal Mahoney Photo: Lady-bug My wife has a problem with any poem I give her to read for a second opinion especially when the poem has no message and my goal is simply to hear what I’m saying and not care if I understand it.

Simon Perchik Photo: JennyHuang And you, licking this reef the way herds are nourished with salt –even your tongue has a trace, bitter, brackish stings though salt is what keeps stone stone

Michael Lee Johnson Photo: pareeerica Edith, in this nursing home blinded with macular degeneration, I come to you with your blurry eyes, crystal sharp mind, your countenance of grace- as yesterday’s winds I have chosen to consume you and take you away.

Aksinia Mihailova Photo: bslmmrs When you leave pieces of yourself in the bodies of other women and try desperately to find yourself complete in the words, I see our home like a ghost boat floating against the current of the river; but the boatman is not there and the night is falling I recollect only […]

David Chorlton Photo: alancleaver_2000 A scene plays out between an apartment house balcony and the sidewalk where a young man walks first away, then turns back weeping toward the woman three screaming storeys high on a spring day with the oleander making nectar of the air.

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.

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

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