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Stefano Bellin

Non ho né Itaca né mare
né Calipso né Sirene
vago senza meta
nel deserto di mezzo.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
I have neither Ithaca nor sea
neither Calypso nor Syrens
I drift aimlessly
in the desert in-between.

About the Author

Stefano Bellin, PhD, is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick (UK), where he is working on a project entitled Global Responsibility: Implicated Subjects and the Shame of the World and completing a monograph, […]

Seth Brown

My heart is a house full of puppies
Who all run to the door when they see you through the window
Because they are hoping that you will feed them
And do not realize that you do not live here any more
Although I have tried to tell them many times
But they do not understand
Because puppies are dumb

About the Author

Twitter: @RisingPun

RC deWinter

i undress slowly dropping my clothing stained with ashes and lust to the floor

then wrapped in your wings lie in the attenuated bed where my real life takes place

between the dying of the sun and its unfailing resurrection heralding the start

of another mindless stretch of hours without you i fill with the memories we made

in the ether across the interminable stretch of miles separating us physically

but never in our hearts a life lived in pixels on fire with the passion we’d banked

for decades until we collided in a virtual miracle […]

Rich Renner

I have a friend and for now I have decided to refer to him as Onslow

who works for a big company that required most of the employees

who had been working from home for a couple of years during lockdown

to return to the office, so my friend Onslow actually brightened while

narrating how he ran into a coworker in the restroom and as they stood

there urinating the coworker mentioned to Onslow that earlier he found

himself in line behind the chief financial officer who was waiting to buy

coffee and crumb cake and speaking […]

Merridawn Duckler

You took my idea about the stars and put your name on it

until dawn came down and did darkness.

Your money rose higher and replaced one star each day

until you were world famous and I was world obscure.

And ideas with no names on them are like musk oxen

which, when threatened, form a circle with newborns

in the middle, their butts a musky barrier against prey,

then become extinct by guns that shoot not only things, but links.

Does it even matter to you that once we both lay,

heads together, looking at that sky of […]

Moctezuma Vailahi

It had been eight months since I dreamt of the whales

being in the water—trapped in glass—feeling their pain—stuck in there with them

I’d like to think the work I’m doing now is helping them shatter their confinement

or at least created some sort of hairline disruption to their imprisonment

A moment with a mentor felt like I should share that they came to me

That is when he promised that the whales were good

There aren’t that many whale people out there, he said.

Frightened—

Are we a dying kind?

What does it mean to be […]

Mary Ellen Talley

Does it even exist anymore?

I mean that K-Mart parking lot

where I lost my Viet Nam era

engagement ring on the asphalt,

shortly before holding the mic

to call out the men’s clothing department

Blue Light Special. Every weeknight one year

I spent stocking—folding—refolding clothes,

plus avoiding the divorced guy

in the adjacent camera department

who prowled his sweet talk across the aisle.

A co-ed back then, my twenty hours a week

bought gas for driving to the commuter college

that year before the future happened,

que será será. (Fact is, my mother woke me up

at dawn next morning to scour the […]

Leopoldo Zampiccoli

Poem for the Piraeus Lion, a few days before leaving Venice.

a chimeric           belonging,

to where      we       have set

foot, and      will         again,

where we             stand now,

and             the             scars

of           foreign          voices

that           […]

Laura Zaino

I have not come to understand. There is no merit in it.

We travel through rabbit holes to find the opposite ends, to see how they connect.

This is not the same as understanding–it is drawing lines on diagrams of thought.

Understand this: the sun will rise whether or not you wake to meet it.

Streams flow into rivers and oceans, understanding without synapse

that this is the way things go.

Wisdom is for the earth and for celestial things.

For us there is only the moment.

You plant your feet in your home soil, despite

understanding that the […]