Public Republic

Peter Kraevski Photo: Robert Couse-Baker The torn-up wallpaper of propriety the savaged slippers of domesticity the loneliness with its unreeled balls of yarn this is the dog of my affection and the cat of yours

We are happy to share that Katerina Stoykova-Klemer’s new poetry collection, “The Most” (Finishing Line Press) is available for pre-publication purchase at www.finishinglinepress.com. Availability date is March 5th.

Corinna Ketterling Photo: David Blackwell. The dachshund, which she left with me drags me behind him through the snow we greet a snowmen and we see all winter’s white enchanting show

Mariana Velichkova Photo: krystynana I collected the remnants of my pride piece by piece I cleared up the shelves of my mind thought by thought I put away the matters of the heart that don’t matter anymore in a cold, dry, secret place to store along with useless souvenirs of fragile memories worn-out masks of […]

Keith Wilson Photo: Ghetu Daniel My metallic grey, this cold static hush across the frightened traffic of my forest. My unfamiliar family, my food, my quarry. I prey alone, head cocked to the side, an ear to the needles of the ground, and the other trained to heaven. I am the truest of predators. The […]

Molly Weinberg (this poem was written while she was in camp during World War II) Photo: Robbie W T Vitamins A, B, C Smooth life’s way for you and me, But if you’re really going far What you need is Vitamin R. Want some vegetables on the sly? Want the occasional refreshing milk? Want o […]

Chantal Bizzini Photo: The Pug Father Water battled light yet they played and the broken shells didn’t wound their feet the wall fell, wall of water on this bleached city, fortified with reefs and flats on the stink of algae mixed with torn boards, tires, corkscrews, gloves of discolored rubber, plastic debris, heaps of rope […]

Kenneth Pobo Photo: Flowery *L*u*z*a* The sun sneaks through Matt’s back yard, appears in his dining room window. Naked and reading the paper, he sips his morning coffee,

Publishing House Fakel Express invites you to the premiere of the poetry book Въздухът Около Пеперудата / The Air Around The Butterfly by Katerina Stoykova 4 December (Friday) at 6:00PM, Rakursi Art Galley, Han Krum Street 4a (behind the City Library), Sofia, Bulgaria

Kenneth Pobo Photo: Darwin Bell Tartuffe’s selling dentures at the mall copped from a dental clinic, winks from the confessional. At the I-95 Welcome Center he hands out maps with bags of blow. On the mayor’s lap. He’s running a resale shop but it’s really a front for a kidnappers. He’s roiling in bad chemistry, […]

Robert Baker Photo: John-Morgan (one brown eye one blue) Sheer curtains blow shroud-white, with a warning wave of hiss, into the tiny room. The window is thrown open to the pre-dawn wind off the Sierras and the wolves are howling a hungry celebration of reunion. I am awake but very physically tired from crossing the […]

Chantal Bizzini Photo: I’ll Never Grow Up Flowers explode, stars, sea serpents, Medusas, rise up, flower to purge their being, disperse their form, their color, to be, after the elation, no more than stem of smoke refallen in the violet-blue water of the bay. Goodfellows, monsters, flakes of gold, one after another, surge, disappear… children […]

Roumen Leonidov From The End of Mythology Photo: DerrickT it’s cozy, safe and warm. So they say. Something like a sanatorium for fanatic manikins. But I don’t buy this. Both my eyes have seen this mantle trailing on its own. No wonder it’s the choicest tablecloth for stains. I can hear them humming underneath: “The […]

Chantal Bizzini Photo: fauxto_digit To Eric Dolphy Streaks, colors split into blaring gold, mystic rays, pouring from blue-grey clouds, decompose in rose strips, stretched thick chalk of reverbating sea, wild mauve and deep purple, new fusion of tender shades then more somber congealed by sun’s fall disappearing back there, at the edge of the inhabited […]

Robert Baker Photo: jenny downing In a quiet conversation over drinks with my very most new friend, some woman wafting by Patchouli explodes the Trojan horse that I keep up my nose. She asks if I’m OK, my maybe new friend does, “A far away look. My, my how rude.” She smiles. I smile back […]

By Therese Halscheid Photo: Kamen Ferdinandov father’s view Do not force me to want these shadowy doctors and faint strangers or look anymore at their leaning over, not when I can open my eyes inward not while I watch, in sleep, the forgotten films, hours of old reels of my life replaying.

Milena Valkanova Photo: akshay moon Mom, there are times when your hand in mine feels like throbbing of a thousand lives together. We are the unsundered chain of blood meandering within the riverbeds where our great grandmothers threw their daughters like bread on the water. Now is a time to let your mother walk on […]

Roumen Leonidov Photo: madmolecule awful pleasure thinking is. Even if a person thinks whether it’s worth thinking. It’s awful when one reclines in repose and doesn’t want and cannot think about one’s brains. It’s awful that homo sapiens doesn’t think. And there comes the homunculus and there comes the homunculus stalin-hitler and with what an […]

Milena Valkanova Photo: Temari 09 You are burning And I am stern We reside On the edge of expectations While you are fending off The tide Of neurotic insecurity I would caress The endeavors And little deaths But you’d rather hide Behind The oblong idea Of constantly renewed cells Of painful understanding

Simon Perchik Photo: Hamed Saber Still, the Earth with so much hair is just not strong enough, the sun takes all the light it wants and every morning you watch the struggle, it ends with the sun fattened feeding her brood in the dark