Public Republic

Simon Perchik Photo: exezippdf 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 […]

Kenneth Pobo Photo: fotupia Dindi slips on a greasy floor while picking up her order of steak, Caesar salad, and spaghetti for Mrs. McFrunt’s table. No one helps her up. On hands and knees, she hobbles over to the room where servers eat. Reid bursts in, “Hey Dindi, your table is screamin’ where’s our food?” […]

Simon Perchik Photo: visualpanic What more proof do you need! jagged left behind –a beautiful stone torn to pieces and near its heart a tiny rock half drift, half moonlight that blossomed to become the opposite shore –all these years in the open though every wave still smells from stone

Kenneth Pobo Photo: angelandspot a barred owl from her open bedroom window— who cooks for you, who cooks for you, she seems to ask. No one. I barely cook for myself, preferring a Banquet TV dinner, or, if tips mount up, Marie Callender. A great cook, it saddens mom that I never want her recipes. […]

Simon Perchik Photo: b3nscott As if they once had teeth, your hands nibble on apples half mud, half worms –you eat only what falls to the ground rotted, serene, made dark by the welcoming slope into evening –you pick the way every stone points where to rest, has this urge to be useful, calms your […]

Simon Perchik Photo: Jeremy Jenum And the sun by a single stroke broken into rain and forgetfulness –you lift a child’s bat that still has heat to it, a ball overgrown and against this mangy glove stumbles headlong as further on –this attic needs more room the bases are full though you try to remember […]

Leigh Anne Hornfeldt Photo: MinimalistPhotography101.com – for N. – Before you fled into whatever firmament burgeoned beyond my door, the weight of quiet kitchen not yet pressed in your palm, that twilight infused disappointment not yet felt

Vladimir Levchev Photo: Andesine My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun – . . . . . . . For I have but the power to kill, Without–the power to die— Emily Dickinson Like Medusa I petrify with my fiery eyes lovers, minutes, streets, houses and trees. Like Medusa I turn the mortal into […]

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 […]

Peter Cowlam Photo: PinkMoose I drove, in leaden convoy, On highways built Through the thinning ambers of autumn, In a falling of leaves fake in its evocation. Then stumbled, on rented properties Masquerading as exotica, and flamed By the varnishes of Eden.

Peter Kraevski Photo: audreyjm529 Your heart is like a forest with shadows shaped like women and fireflies that hover along the grassy path.

Sabina Karleva Photo: fdecomite The portable sunrise That’s opening a bitter eye over the most lonesome sea I transferred to the edge of the possible I’m putting my finger deep inside the flower That’s blooming with big and heavy F l e s h y leaves In the reddest desert…

Maya Lyubenova Photo: kretyen hither and thither a beetle’s flight in the kitten’s eyes насам натам полет на бръмбар в очите на котето * * * summer cleaning … I’m sorry little spider лятно почистване … съжалявам паяче * * * high tide stronger than the rumble a nighingale’s song

Peter Kraevski Photo: hamed So happiness is this – a fatty fish, I caught it while I was squatting at the meanders of desolation. I offered it a spoon bite and it bit – it caught itself in the snare of illusions and it is giving it a try to creep to the safety island […]

Maya Lyubenova Photo: gnas quiet morning – for you dead tomtit тихо утро – за теб мъртво синигерче * * * thunder strike a sparrow fidgets beneath the eaves

Shae Davidson A quote from Stanley Kunitz tucked away in Stick Tight Man expresses the roots of Jim Lally’s approach to writing: “gratitude for the gift of life.” Lally’s depiction of rural life in the twenty-first century celebrates lived experience by embracing the cycles of change and growth—and the attendant patterns of gain and loss. […]

Georgia Jones-Davis Sus-toss, explains poet Katerina Stoykova-Klemer in her remarkable and engaging chapbook, “The Most,” is Hopi for the “disease that cause different parts of you to live in different places.” Ms, Klemer would know. She is a young woman who has emigrated from Bulgaria to the United States, straddling multiple worlds at once. “Sus-toss […]

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

Maria Lipiskova Translation by Ludmila Yordanova Photo: woodleywonderworks To bring bombs to certain places. Slowly. Descending into deep crevices. Slowly. Filling them up with your hands. And exitting. Slowly. Placing words. At certain places. While shielding yours eyes. And walking away. Slowly. To hear the explosions?

Julie Barbour Photo: kcdstm I heard someone sing: To love is to bury and at the time misunderstood,