• Poetry

    To Childbirth, by Jasmine Bailey

    May 11, 2020 /

    In our hava nagila,
    my chair tilted into fire—
    you savored my burnt hair,
    the way I look
    compelled. What didn’t I give
    that you asked? That’s

    a rhetorical question.
    I presented the dowry
    of nerves, muscles, blood,
    a hope chest of napkins
    no longer white.

    The chrysanthemum
    is more than chlorophyll and cellulose.
    But a woman on the rack,
    a woman in love,
    is a secretless animal.

    *

    Jasmine Bailey is the author of two poetry collections from Carnegie Mellon University Press: Alexandria (2014),

    read more
  • Art and Photography,  Poetry,  Translation

    Five poems from “Nomad” by João Luís Barreto Guimarães (translated from the Portuguese by António Ladeira and Calvin Olsen) Artwork by Anthony Ulinski

    May 7, 2020 /

     

    In the photographs of others

     

    I am present in the past of lives I
    have no knowledge of (men who saunter to the north
    women who are headed south) in
    photos
    that tied me to several foreign cities
    where my face remained retained
    by mere chance. A photo is memory
    (like a map
    is voyage)
    in them I’m anonymous at the corner of
    a scene
    just because I crossed that square
    at that time.

    read more
  • Poetry

    Devil’s Parlor Trick by Charlie Clark

    May 4, 2020 /

    It is only now that you recall the emperor

    scorpion he at parties would take out and with

    two open hands on the granite kitchen countertop

    bait into stinging him the pain the gag once the tail

    stuck in raised up until like eight scrambling

    ends of lace it hung from the thick pink turning

    purple at the puncture and like chirping fan

    blades the laughter in the windless air of the airless

    little kitchen coming from the heady smear of faces

    to whom nothing lasting had been revealed

    watching what he’d done be undone be gently

    shaken back into its tank and how he allowed

    each to test the pulse of the darkened ring already

    growing stiff there in the center of his hand

    *

    Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland.

    read more
  • Cross-Genre,  Poetry

    Two Poems by Phoebe Reeves

    May 4, 2020 /

    Part One, Question the Sixteenth: Works of Truth**

     

    There are fourteen species of silent star,

    and the species vary according to generative power.

    A woman cannot perform divination, knowing

    that blood and the dead answer. But think—

    the soul appeared through a woman who was

    a witch, just as the images of things

    are called by the names they represent.
    read more
  • Corona Chronicle,  Cross-Genre,  Poetry

    “ode to summer” by Cheyanne Anderson

    May 2, 2020 /
    every time I go onto my balcony
    bare feet on dusty cement
    and look down the street
    towards the subway
    towards the market
    towards the road straight to the beach
    the air gets a little warmer
    and I can feel the spring preparing,
    about to pass me by
    _
    and I hope I’ll make it out in time to buy a new sundress
    and a pair of sandals
    because summer somehow always catches me by surprise
    and by the time I’ve thought to embrace the way humidity sits on skin

    there’s a bite in the air and it’s gone again
    _
    I keep dreaming of ways to catch it
    like a firefly in a jar
    (only temporary)
    so I can see it up close
    so I can remember to notice the sweat on the back of my neck
    and the proof it serves
    that     I was alive that day
    so     I can skip down sidewalks
    so     I can lie in the park
    so     I can chill another bottle of wine
    s    o I can kiss and kiss and kiss
    s    o I can forget to put on sunscreen
    s    o I can walk until my feet ache
    s    o I can embrace the way my hair frizzes from my scalp like a crown
    s    o I can fall in love in ways I’m not sure I deserve
    s    o I can remember to admire the way the fire hydrant down the street
    (    somehow always breaking open)
    w    ashes away cigarette butts and receipts and regrets
    a    nd makes a babbling brook on Bushwick streets
    j    ust until the repairman comes on Monday
    j    ust until I can bring myself to open the jar and let it go
    a    nd whisper well wishes into the first breeze of autumn

    my heart is too big for this bedroom,

    read more
  • Book Reviews,  LIVE with LIT

    “Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit by Eliese Colette Goldbach” Reviewed by LaVonne Roberts

    April 30, 2020 /

    Forged In Steel, A Nation Divided

    In Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit, Eliese Colette Goldbach reflects on her childhood as the second daughter in a Polish Catholic family and her three years as a steelworker. As a little girl in Cleveland, she could often see the rust-colored buildings of the city’s steel plant in the distance when she rode through town with her father. Eliese never imagined her identity would become Utility Worker number 6691, or that Trump would become President.

    “I wasn’t supposed to be a steelworker. I wasn’t supposed to spend my nights looking up at the bright lights on the blast furnace,

    read more