Public Republic

Haley Crigger Photo: Stephane Enten The young thing inside ostracized a looking glass in New York City. & miles South, a lonely dolt is a fur-gilded killer.

Simon Perchik Photo: jar() These sheep have no choice either though even in summer they still want to hear the truth just by staring back at the grass lifelike – it’s not for you they hold power here, let go nothing, not their fleece not these sleeves, face to face – you have no right […]

Simon Perchik Photo: jar() You still use rain, breathe in till your mouth is full -you can’t jump clear, grow huge on a sky that has no holes, no Earth -what did you say, what words were helped along, holding on to the others all the way down, facing the sun

Donal Mahoney Photo: amiefedora When she arrives in sunlight, orchid ribbons flowing in her hair, an orchid dress rising, she finds the rest of us standing there simply unaware

Simon Perchik Photo: jar() This path so like the others doesn’t know where else to go and for each funeral you build another hallway in another mountain, the palaces filling with a great rockslide

Haley Crigger Photo: Ruth L I discovered the heart of an absentminded wife, or husband in the small cog of a habit, still sipping behind your back ribs with my sorry, my tongue, the most obtuse muscle –two tastes for busted candy, flashed on a soft-spoken hood. You spoke of bird dimensions, baby chicks in […]

Simon Perchik Photo: jar() The ground so slow to heal has yellowed though the camera injected a faint gloss calmed the family and friends still afraid to move the body -not too close! Your cheek could scare her off and the snapshot tree and all, left empty cared for by the sun alone can’t get […]

E.K. Mortenson Photo: OpenSkyMedia I know what happens in the mines. Men, far from homes and families; days below ground in the darkness, nights lurking with women, girls, the dust on their feet, in their hair. I see my husband twice in the year when I take the bus to the mines. We have little […]

Jeremy Paden Photo: molly_darling freedom, or is a love that does not get jealous, does not beg, plead and stand before you like a bored, hungry child, wanting

Chris McCurry Photo: me and the sysop Stacked underneath the pine behind the shed, their grey feathers pull away from the bone. On hot days the stench carries to the house and flies swarm laying eggs.

Jeremy Paden Photo: THE… There were words we never said. I thought it was because we did not need to, only children point to the ghostly moon in the blue sky and speak its name. Can we say love and mean a year of Jubilee—

Stoyanka Grudova Translated by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Photo: Fillmore Photography we throw stones we throw with bare hands we’ll be gathering them biting coals tomorrow when the weather starts blowing we will pray for a single tear

Simon Perchik Photo: sezzles Half jack, half when the ace finds its way back and the vague stomp each time you deal a spade –you teach the kids dead ends and random turns half cards, half burial grass –you say take the risk bet! and suddenly the black jack will fall to your knees and […]

Stoyanka Grudova Translated by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Photo: SteveD. i see worm i see hook i see rod i see…

Simon Perchik Photo: DeusXFlorida This bird must hear the blood all day nesting in its gut slit open to catch rainwater draining some roof the way your hand dries from the balcony half feathers half seaweed –it listens for waves, each one now motionless bending over the other –two deaths from one botched egg

Stoyanka Grudova Translated by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer Photo: erix! the traveling point of view of water even the idea of it is enough

Jeremy Paden Photo: briandeadly Do whales beach themselves because the idea of land is a gene-memory tucked away in every cell? Driven mad by the scent of lavender and verbena, do they swim up on land hoping to find that sad garden? Are their songs a recitation

Jeremy Paden Photo: ganesha.isis If I cannot be your shine, your floating thing, let me be your loricate, sea cradle, fastened to the belly of your rock. I can live in the saltiest of your waters. I will sing you songs of the days when all the world

Jeremy Paden Photo: KJGarbutt He asks me, Are you finding time to write? I smile, not because I’m not.

Chris McCurry Photo: Elvert Barnes While I slept they wandered into a hug, held the door for people drifting in and out of hotel lobbies, flipped through every page in the photography section at the public library. Today they resent holding a fork or accenting my words.