Online Exclusives

Free verse and the prose poem may have emerged in revolt against the formality inhabiting French language but insofar as New York School poets write imitating the relaxed line that they have read they persuade us of their urbanity and their literariness. [...]

08.01.04

CLOUD / RIDGE

by Stephen Ratcliffe

pale blue white haze in front of the vertical

plane of the ridge in window on left, sunlit

orange flower on green passion-vine covered

fence in right foreground [...]

07.08.04

Summer Letters

by Joshua Harmon

shored up inside still
they speak liturgies over
this valley’s grid [...]

06.01.04

The Skirmish

by Kira Henehan

“… and then I died and went to France.”
Thus, the story of your life wrapped up and pensive. [...]

04.17.04

Two Poems

by Rebecca Black

Play your hand, Madame.
Black stripe down
your dress, keyhole slit,
door to a dark room. [...]

02.26.04

FAQ

by Ben Doyle

I first drew shoes on an animal a long long time ago. [...]

02.17.04

The Library of Seven Readings

by Leonard Schwartz

Because its material substratum remains transcendental
the freedom of the subject, which the transcendental is designed to rejuvenate,
allows us to inhale and exhale refreshing drafts just as we approach the summit. [...]

01.22.04

Two Poems

by Brian Swann

It drew in my eyes, a slab, on it a huge white fish
just landed, or beached, a beluga, intact, naked [...]

01.06.04

From Nets

by Jen Bervin

you absent in

every thing

the deep vermilion
figures
pattern of

your shadow [...]

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In Print

Conjunctions:80

Ways of Water

Spring 2023
Edited by Bradford Morrow

Online

Rainmaking

by Lindsey Drager

May 24, 2023

Of course the book she writes—the lesser book, the book about nothing—becomes a popular text, one that readers adore. When they ask her what she will write next, she says she is going to write the book over. Over? they ask her.
Again, she says. She isn’t really a writer, she tells them, she’s a transcriber. She transcribes stories.
Across languages? they ask.
No, she says. That would be translation. I used to do that but stopped, she says. Now I transcribe. I take texts and transcribe them into another version of the same language.
So you rewrite, they say.
No, she says. You’ll see.

The Wave Readers

by Kristin Posehn

May 18, 2023

For thousands of years, the peoples of the Marshall Islands have entertained a bustling interisland travel by canoe and small sailing craft without any of the tools—compass, sextant, nautical charts, and, these days, GPS—on which the rest of the world has depended. Within a purely oral tradition, Marshallese navigators developed a highly refined system of voyaging, relying entirely on their senses to decipher the subtlest of codes in the aqueous environment. Theirs has always been a world of waves.

The River Abides

With photographs by the author

by Susan Hanson

May 10, 2023

I’ve been snorkeling in this river for sixteen years now and documenting a small stretch of it for about thirteen. Once a week, year ‘round, regardless of the weather, I will swim for several hours, picking up trash as I go, but mostly photographing what I find—fish and turtles, plants and rocks, even the contours of the riverbed, which change depending on the flow. Based on John Burroughs’ maxim—“To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday”—I decided a long time ago to focus on the half-mile reach that runs from City Park, through Sewell Park, and on to the spillway below Spring Lake.