Public Republic

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 missed his funeral; her friends were there.

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
who was always so funny until

Shae Davidson

Photo: Joi
“There was a river in Ohio that caught fire,” Gordon said as he poured sugar into his coffee. “Near Cleveland, I think. So many chemicals dumped in year after year—one day it just went.”
Gordon was a reliable source for obscure information whether useful, disturbing, or just puzzling. His family had moved here [...]

Charlotte Pence

Photo: Clearly Ambiguous
Nothing lasts, we know, so why do I lift
The box turtle from the middle of the road
To the side where crab grass pocks asphalt crumbs?
Picking it up, I feel the tight-fisted weight
Of some creature shrunken inside, desperate
To be set down. I hold it away from my chest
As if I don’t want to [...]

Erin Chandler

Photo: CarbonNYC
Samantha told me my heart had been broken three times. Samantha’s the psychic medium I talked to the other day. I know everybody thinks ‘yeah, yeah’ but she was good and she was right. My heart has been broken three times. All three times felt pretty much the same… lost, lonely, devastated, like [...]

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 [...]

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.

Charlotte Pence

Photo: Sam Ilić
Twelve, sneaking out, we went to the pool on a dare
and stripped in silence. When the moonlight pinkened
my nipples, I stared, and allowed them to stare.
In the curls of Michael’s pubic hair, light glistened

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.

Erin Chandler

Photo: Hamed Saber
“I’ve been where you’re hanging, I think I can see how you’re penned; when you are not feeling holy your loneliness says that you’ve sinned…” Leonard Cohen
It was Anton I was most worried about. Not how I was going to get back to North Carolina, where I was going to live, [...]

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

Rose McCann

Photo: Lidia Tagnesi
-1-
It’s early Saturday morning, the Halloween party ended hours ago, and before his overnight guests begin to stir from their drug- and alcohol-induced sleep, William de Vere discovers a letter that the landlady has slid under his door in the middle of the night. With growing alarm he reads the letter several [...]

Charlotte Pence

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