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December 2023

Cover Artist: Carlo Cadenas

I ask you to find a better song; a louder song, a sweeter song—

Frank Marshall Davis
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  • Li-Young Lee
  • Ben Okri
  • Jacqueline Johnson
  • Ricki Cummings
  • Jenny Zhang
See Table of Contents
From this Issue
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Juke

      By Diane Seuss
      What kind of juke do you prefer?
      For me, it’s the kind with three
      songs and thirty-seven blank
      title strips. Three songs, and two
      are “Luckenbach, Texas.”
      The third is beautiful and arcane,
      but the patrons hate it,
      and the record skips.
      I prefer the three-song juke
      and the...

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    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Song of the Blue Ridge Mountains

      By Susan Nguyen

      In the south we gather like thunderheads: urgent & heavy: make friends in every room: blue jeans stain on the walls: I kiss many lovers & not lovers: thumb blackberries from the ravine into our purpled mouths: at night I...

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    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine The Metaphysics of Your Presence

      By Robert Bernard Hass
      A fragment. To be followed by an infinitive phrase.
      Your hipster cynical voice. One. Then two. Then three words.
      In sequence. Subject without predicate. Running to passion
      (Predicate without subject). The obligatory foreign phrase
      And obscure allusion. The Sprachspiele pregnant
      With mandrakes. And these interstices!...

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Table of Contents

Poems
As Direct As Good Blues: Frank Marshall Davis
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