New Poetry with Audio!

Donald Revell
Stephen Burt
Paul Hoover
Jonah Winter
Cathy Wagner
Reginald Shepherd
Nin Andrews
Sophia Kartsonis
Sandra Miller
Joshua Harmon
Devin Johnston
Chuck Zerby
Sara Henning
Ognjen Smiljanic
Lance Phillips
Peter Drake
Kathleen Byrne
Ernest Hilbert
Garth Greenwell
Marc McKee

Criticism

Brian Henry on Kinsella
Gabriel Welsch on Northrop
Gabriel Welsch on Smith
Cecily Iddings on Ruefle
Christopher McDermott on Wenderoth

Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Optic, Third Coast and elsewhere.

Caddis Flies in Two Lessons

                    a rant against being left behind while you flit through Spain

1. Most caddis larvae surround themselves with a protective case, made from various materials from their surroundings fastened together with a sticky silk-like secretion produced from a gland near the mouth. Each species uses its own particular materials – grains of sand, plant fragments and even empty snail shells – and builds its case to a specific design. It is often possible to identify a species simply from its case. The sand grains or other materials are frequently cemented together very neatly to form a mosaic.

A weather report:

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plains

Here plain girls in print dresses drink rain

from an unspained distillery

2. Moth-like insects, with two pairs of membranous wings densely covered with tiny hairs and held roof-wise over the body at rest. All are fairly  weak flyers and the females of a few species are wingless. Most are dull brownish or greyish insects, flying at dusk.

Flightless girls find ways to flee. 

Postcards land in the mailbox I painted cool mint green:

The color of your favorite ice-cream

(The color of your heart it seems).

They say  Lovely here, but missing you.

They say  Every bright broken thing resounds with you.

Or maybe simply Wish I’d invited you.

A drop of honey to each corner then I press

each postcard to my flesh.

I am a Spanish panorama,

a caddis fly of fifty-cent sentiment.

I am encased.

Spanish fly – See anti-aphrodesiac. See Senorita Abandoned.

Barcelona postcard:  If ever a city was your city…color upon color

Where you are the fountains spurt a collage of gawdy puzzles.

Here I am a birdbath of spite.

A decoupage of longing.

A nude puzzle mostly undone.

If I could, I’d ask a passing caddis fly

whether those gorgeous shards ever cut

the bodies they’re meant to armor.

Limbo

1. I’m here to say it can be a holding place for years

A halfway house for love and worn-out.

A microscopic erosion     eros   broken down

to its elemental grind

                                   and grinding down.

Root word for desire and distribute.

God of love, a cupid strike which starts that erogation

one arrow-tip bit of flesh at a time. 

Arouse    to stir

Erose       one bite mark

shaped like a bitter moon.

2. Be it Catholic waiting room

or back bend under bamboo pole

held waist-high like a jumprope between two people

         then lower

                          and lower

and lower

3. Someone will say love and then hold you under pressure

underwater for years and years

Saying he wants to make sure you have a drink.

Saying she wants to see you swim.

4. I mean the body is a gothic arch, a wishbone held at that angle

so sharp it has to snap.

5. The broken beak of a living bird

more painful than quick-bitten nails

their raw luna-beds.

6. A ghost rises on the stairs like

a bathtowel moon, apparition of cheap light

& terrycloth

hovers there a shiver

& then falls to the unswept floor.

7. I mean, the broken beak of a bird that has to go on.

The snag and the ache and hurts to take in

what you need just to fill you.

Sidereal Time

And when he shall die, take him out the ballgame

and bat around a little eternity with his wooden leg.

Cut him out in little stars and sew them

on the majorette’s epaulets, let him (just this once)

serve himself up like a galaxy.

He will make the face that says icky

so tell him Heaven-so-fine go fetch me some soap

and he will because he loves when we call him

anything that sounds a little infinite. All the world

loves a sorry knight. He’s a simile

for nothing. Pay no worship

to the garish one. He’s a soluble prince in a lather

of time.  He’s the plan

with the built-in roaming fee.

Don’t expect him to come through

the bad weathers. Don’t ask him to

do anything that rhymes with shower or glove.

Accept the things he’s best at doing instead:

salting fields, playing dead