Reading natural history on a bus leaving Ottawa
By Sunny Chan
“The day I found out seabirds drink saltwater using a gland above their eyes / We celebrated the news like it was something that happened to us.”
Poetry
We are so grateful to all of our partner-poets for sharing their work with us—please enjoy their beautiful words in our Featured Poetry catalogue.
The Afterlife
“Here, nobody / is what you’d call / deep. Mister Vroom Vroom / cruises his Vette / around the beach.”
Bird
By Jen Town
“Hold your hours. Hold each one / as it ticks away in in your hand / like holding a baby bird / whose entire being breathes / from your palm,”
Post Immigration Pastoral
“Do you // remember his steady hands? / How badly we wanted to love, in him, // some unliftable part of ourselves?”
The place in another universe teaching us our lost adolescence in a new alphabet
“In another part of you, the / damn-near-room-sized / loom, in another, us singing / Madonna acoustic just / because.”
Self-Portrait: Bullet, Prayer, Teeth
“The world wants us to see this– / girl in the ground. Girl / in the gutter — lover, lamplight // sifting through gum trees.”
Poetry We Admire: Place
By Kim Harvey
For August’s Poetry We Admire, we’ve gathered seven recent poems from across the web that engage with the theme of Place. Sit back and enjoy the ride as we explore the stunning landscapes in these beauties from Traci Brimhall in Terrain.org, José Olivarez in Guesthouse, Faylita Hicks in The Adroit Journal, Travis Cravey in Marías at Sampaguitas, Catherine Pierce in The Shore, Nadia Escalante Andrade translated by Cecilia Weddell in Harvard Review Online and Sharon Tracey in SWWIM Every Day.
Let the World Have You
By Mikko Harvey
“your life really / does turn out to be / a cycle of starting / fires, briefly / worshipping them”
Porcupines
“outside this shelter, a plague / stretching its empire around the world / fastens a mouth like a griot to his reed”