Selected Poems

STARFISH
Allen Brafman

FEMALE IMPERSONATOR
(for Sean Penn)
Karl Tierney

FUCK YOU
Hilary Melton

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ISSUE NUMBER FIVE

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ISSUE NUMBER SIX

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ISSUE NUMBER SEVEN

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ISSUE NUMBER EIGHT

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ISSUE NUMBER NINE

FOR A MICHIGAN FIELD

Naked in the green fire
of your thigh high grasses
spreading acres and acres under
these lost soles

I kneel into your forgotten wet earth
and pull by the roots rough
blades free from their mother
and rub my breasts

stomach and hands until
you scratch into skin
red anger for my leaving twenty years ago,
your ignorant country girl

fleeing hateful stares of farmers’ wives
rows and rows of jarred cherries
glowing in their canning cellars
dirt floor cold outcasting

for my Russian language and looks,
guiltless Christian rule breaking and
railroad track walking home long after
night fell on God’s housebroken boys and girls

I howled the moon down and ate burdock
stars with cow’s milk for breakfast
until my loneliness stepped on a bus
going east and concrete hard

I buried the child
under brick edifices of forgetting
my ghost drove into town today
and walked down Main Street

Forgive me, orange epaulette black bird,
pollen heavy devil riding low,
May’s cool breath in the maples’ sails,
pinching wings of cabbage butterflies

I am stripped and lie before you
flesh to field
magnificent solitude
I have come home.

Claudette Buelow