Category: Poetry

Valence

John Nieves When sleep slips and the walls slip and the newsof the day is about who has slipped out of selfand into numeration, into a graph of a graph, thisis how we lose our breath. We lose it...

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Windows 

Arnisha Royston i bought a gym membership. worked out on the same machine in the same corner everyday. there is a man that likes to workout two machines down from me. i thought about waving at him. i...

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The Sun Temple

Jane Zwart Consider the forsythia. Considerthe child who jostles that basketof saffron antlers. Considerthe charm of goldfinchesblown from the bush, sparksfrom ember, and the lemonsucker the child...

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The Boys’ Team

Nikki Barnhart From our vantage point on the bleachers, we watched them. We sat shivering, frozen still, in polyblend short-shorts and tee-shirts knotted—coquettishly, we let ourselves believe—at...

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Crepe Myrtles & All Those Other Blooming Trees

Hannah V. Warren 2022 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize First Runner Up when we find a river we rejoice                  as if we’ve never seen so...

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Self-Portrait as Illumination

Carolyn Oliver Sunset casts a madder wash across the last nun in the scriptorium, coats in rose her last psalm,  her quill from a river-plucked  swan. Near the margin, a gash—...

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Things that Pierce

Corinne Wohlford Mason After the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon  The way a child explains the rules of a thing to me. Handwriting from another century. The smell of eucalyptus. What a...

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Confession

Holli Carrell All my life, I’ve hungered  for a quiet privacy.   I must explain this to you.  As a girl, I wanted   a door, deep in the vault   of my...

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Adam in Eden

Shay Swindlehurst 2022 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest Honorable Mention God had made for Adam a Jungle. The Gardens of Eden rioted, strived against Adam’s toil. Each day he cut the...

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Things I Can Remember

Jeff Whitney The name of the bag of sugar I carried around for two weeks in seventh grade because it was my baby. The stampede of cows my brother and I teased to chasing  in New Mexico the year...

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