kingsoftrain

Peter Twal is the author of Our Earliest Tattoos, winner of the 2018 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Believer, Best New Poets, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

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It’s the Memory of Our Betters

On the moon, a blue jay, unsure where it last left its nest
prays to Saint Anthony while on earth someone incorrectly
adjusts a thermostat & a museum of natural history explodes— creating

more natural history Lost in awe in a light bulb

exhibit, reading every last placard, the sun explodes as well, a pimple
from a Hubble away & yet: The torch has been passed down, the sun sighs, smothered
beneath the rubble Death comes to us full-

bellied but always craving & the next time architects resurrect the museum,
precautions are taken to protect the art: Patrons please…

I.V. Katen is a young writer who goes to school in Atlanta, GA.

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baby foal or i fear the feeling of water on my bare skin

when it rains outside, it doesn’t stop. the flood rolls in easily, smoothly. taking out many. taking out all. the children– they say that when you look out over the horizon when the water rises above the lower doorsteps– they say there’s a stillborn horse, covered in placenta and oxygen-starved blood, just there. just there. “reincarnated from a bad, bad person, probably.” reincarnated to die in the womb. cowled over the rivers and the streams. cowled over the rocks. dead as a doornail but still, just there. something that will never gallop. something that will never breathe by itself. did the mother drown? was the father shot? were there any older siblings? younger? walking towards it proves unnecessary. it’s just there. strabismus…

Bad Anatomy
poems, Hannah Cohen
Glass Poetry Press, 2018

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Hannah Cohen is a poet of petition whose Bad Anatomy had me apologizing to the ruins for learning too quickly and to my eyes for treating them like the same birthmark. Had me asking presence to reveal its age. Cohen understands that if sorrow was at first a failed comedian, it was next the uncredited creator of the laugh track. By which I mean to say this book happens twice. In this, the regifted paperweight of becoming. In that, the bodily future of having been. Periphery has no country. These poems are astral and frank.

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reflection by Barton Smock

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book is here:
http://www.glass-poetry.com/chapbooks/bad-anatomy.html

Barbara Fant, from Youngstown, Ohio, is a minister, poet, and artist facilitator. She has been writing and performing for over ten years. She has represented Columbus on four National poetry slam teams and five individual competitions. She placed 8th out of 96 poets in the 2017 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She has been commissioned by The Columbus Foundation, the City of Columbus, and the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio. She has featured with The Columbus Symphony, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and The Harmony Project. You can find her work in the Columbus Makes Art campaign, the Columbus Museum of Art, TEDx Columbus, and Columbus Alive named her a 2017 People to Watch. She is the author of one poetry collection, Paint, Inside Out (released in 2010 by Penmanship Books of New York City), and two chapbooks, Them Brilliant Suns and RibCaged (both released in March of 2017). She…