Issue 9.1 is officially at the printer, and we’re as cranked up as four-year-olds on cherry Kool-Aid. There’s still time to order your subscription here! To whet your appetite for the issue (which is so much better than a powder composed of red dye, citric acid, and other natural and artificial flavors), we wanted to give you a quick taste. Here are excerpts from four forthcoming poems. Next week, look for sip-sized samples of prose from the issue.
Angela Ball, from “Remarks You May Have Prepared for the Dinner”
. . . Excuse me, does this by any chance contain
Potash or sundries? I’m allergic
To sundries, especially anything
The color of baby chicks.
Is this a premises? If so, we may have to leave. I think
I’m feeling queasy. . . .
Patrizia Cavalli, translated by Geoffrey Brock:
Love that’s not mine nor even yours
but a fenced field we entered once,
which you a little later left,
and which I, lazy, made my home. . . .
Gregory Lawless, from “Foreclosure”:
. . . You call me back to the car. The way a man loses his hands between ladder rungs. You with your guardrail beauty. Sloping gently out of view. With your dents and etchings. . . .
Medbh McGuckian, from “The Flower of the Moment of What Comes Easily”
. . . Even the daylight feels as mute
As the fourfold halo of the May moon
Or the thoughts we say are ours
When stars lose their nests,
Pearllike letters hidden down
A mineshaft. . . .
