There were no wrong answers.
On torrential, housebound days,
even our shared boredom
made us tremble and we couldn’t
keep our clothes on. [...]
Online Exclusives
12.18.18
From The Fourth Moment
Late in the month you bore about
doing something else with money. A magnet’s song,
I’d go on a weeknight in a small city with friends,
uncertain of the clapboard light, or who would
come. [...]
doing something else with money. A magnet’s song,
I’d go on a weeknight in a small city with friends,
uncertain of the clapboard light, or who would
come. [...]
12.11.18
Two Poems
12.04.18
On the Floor, Beside the Bed
by Peter Orner
I read somewhere that we brood when we’re alone, we act when we’re together. As in act in a play. But she wasn’t acting, at least she didn’t know she was acting. Or maybe she was a far better actor than he was. [...]
11.29.18
The Fisherman Bombardier of Naval Station Norfolk: A Performance in Four Generations, Three Races, and Too Many Genders to Name
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity
In this mariner’s damp the lichen sprouts, or rather creeps, in the manner molds and kisses do, prurient. Slightly closer then farther toward and away from their undisclosed destination. Investigating, guarded, but unwilling to cease from exploration. [...]
11.27.18
Dick Shook
by Jeffrey Ford
Out here in the land of corn, if the farm people get to know you and judge you not too obstreperous for their barnyard sensibilities, you’re going to eventually hear at least one and probably a lot more stories about Dick Shook. [...]
11.22.18
The Empyrean Light
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity
Something was lying in the street. Ms. Wronski thought she saw it move, but by the time she had juggled her way up the stairs with her keys and the bag with the milk and the crumple of supermarket flyers and her satchel of ungraded homework, she was no longer certain. [...]
11.20.18
Film: NOX Transfer
by Karla Kelsey
The film begins silver, white, and black as two nude bodies make their way down the beach to a sea scattered with geranium heads a layer of petals overtaking us, one male and one female, as the wave does. [...]
11.15.18
Transfer
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity
After the sudden death of my employer, I was tasked with overseeing the transfer of his personal library. The books would travel from his studio in New York City to an arts foundation in Italy, where my employer had once enjoyed a long and productive stay, many years in the past. [...]
11.13.18
The Malingerers
8:00 p.m. in this perpetual night shift, and we talk again to the person inside the photo booth, you know, that one photo booth that tunnels all the way down—or up, depending on where you are—to that familiar place where all afterlife and underworld mythologies owe their artifice, the predictability of salvation they purport to deliver. [...]
11.08.18
Days of Heaven
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity
A grown-up man not unlike me is trying to coax a struggling child into a box. That’s badly phrased and only a single sentence in we are in need of starting over. [...]
11.06.18
From It Was Over There by That Place
by Diane Glancy
There were parts I recognized.
I saw by night a man riding a red horse and he stood among the myrtle trees in the bottom and behind him were red horses, sorrel and white. My Lord what are these? [...]
I saw by night a man riding a red horse and he stood among the myrtle trees in the bottom and behind him were red horses, sorrel and white. My Lord what are these? [...]
11.01.18
Why Brother Stayed Away
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity
by Ann Beattie
The moment had come to see if it was true that Grumpa had a collection of ties lined with pictures of what her brother called “naughty ladies.” [...]
10.30.18
Two Poems
In the beginning she was guilty, then her guilt
was scene:
the drift of rust-rimmed apple leaves,
the latticework of branches whose fruit [...]
was scene:
the drift of rust-rimmed apple leaves,
the latticework of branches whose fruit [...]
10.23.18
Black Box
by David Ryan
Even though I was a couple of floors below on the sidewalk, I thought I recognized her from long ago when I, or we, lived in another country. But I heard she’d died—nothing confirmed, but I’d been told as much, and yet, what do you do with this but try to forget that the person is real, forget that they may still be moving through life. [...]
10.16.18
Incomplete Enlightenment
The knife was raised
before there was an after.
He cried out, “Stop, stop!
“My name means laughter.” [...]
before there was an after.
He cried out, “Stop, stop!
“My name means laughter.” [...]
10.09.18
The Necklace
It was his mother’s necklace, so it had value to him, more value to him than probably to his wife. It was meant for a woman though, so he couldn’t wear it. [...]
10.02.18
Three Poems
Song of Betel leaves being moved
from one cheek to the other and
someone sleeps on a sofa, the peal
of fleecy bells in the distance.
These real things. These real
things that make everything
real around them. [...]
from one cheek to the other and
someone sleeps on a sofa, the peal
of fleecy bells in the distance.
These real things. These real
things that make everything
real around them. [...]
09.25.18
Five Poems
by Vincent Katz
Take the depth of spring in air
A depth-charge of life that is also death
To be in the right place
To take their picture [...]
A depth-charge of life that is also death
To be in the right place
To take their picture [...]
09.18.18
Four Poems
by Jessica Grim
And in having “lost” a person twenty
years back as if out in these woods as if
looking will find will be
found [...]
years back as if out in these woods as if
looking will find will be
found [...]
09.11.18
The Orams
The Oram brothers live up the mountain. Head east on the main road until it crosses the river and forks. Take the fork leading into the woods. Take the road less traveled. Don’t pat yourself on the back for your poet jokes. That is a false poem, and that poet knew it. [...]
09.04.18
Curios
The skin is useful for allowing Heather to draw close to other products, to trade touches that result in pleasure, tickles, irritation, and rashes that blister and peel away. Heather’s internal units archive the glistening faces of other products. She wonders how they keep themselves so smooth, so lifelike. [...]
08.28.18
Declarations and Observations
It wasn’t even necessary to write a statement in blood on the walls. We have extensive accounts, typed out neatly: “They took him to a room and beat him. On another occasion, he was forced to lie down on the floor, while the MPs jumped off a table onto his back and legs.” [...]
08.21.18
Four Poems
The sidewalk tables are ruins
that we walk through, eager.
It has always been like this.
A sear with a varnish of butter
and fresh pepper. A swallow
of wine. A swallow. [...]
that we walk through, eager.
It has always been like this.
A sear with a varnish of butter
and fresh pepper. A swallow
of wine. A swallow. [...]
08.14.18
Sequentials
The coffee from yesterday warmed up and left in the microwave, the late-December sky two hours before the sun comes up outside of smudgy windows. Sitting. The desk. The bed. The bed the desk. It’s funny the things we hold on to, for no particular reason, or no good reason. [...]
07.31.18
Six Poems
by Jessica Reed
Perhaps we should begin in extreme heat
or intemperate ice, in salt solutions,
in drastic acid or radical alkaline, in heavy metals
or in toxic waste— wherever life seems improbable [...]
or intemperate ice, in salt solutions,
in drastic acid or radical alkaline, in heavy metals
or in toxic waste— wherever life seems improbable [...]
07.24.18
Done to Scale
First, an unsteady tree of clothing inside the door: the coat rack, heaped with jackets, scarfs and furs, most torn, buttons missing, some stained, all rarely worn as few ever go out—for what is outside the house but another house? [...]
07.17.18
Three Poems
07.10.18
Even Huck, Even Emmeline Grangerford
Like me when I was a child, Huck Finn hates Sundays. And sunshine. One day, “Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny,” Huck explains, [...]
06.26.18
The Camping Trip
by Rob Walsh
The purpose of the camping trip was to get away from the house and our ordinary routine, we explained to the boy, knowing he would resist if we said the real purpose was to learn more about his new school and how the other kids were treating him, specifically a bully named “Chuck.” [...]
06.19.18
Four Prose Poems
I wrote this letter to explain my withdrawing myself from school
In school, the brief schooling I attended, the benefits of water were endlessly extolled. (Eckhart Tolle, mindfulness, a tripart time, a mermaid time, a time that just was not going to work for the mountains.) [...]
In school, the brief schooling I attended, the benefits of water were endlessly extolled. (Eckhart Tolle, mindfulness, a tripart time, a mermaid time, a time that just was not going to work for the mountains.) [...]
06.12.18
The Open Water
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue
by Arthur Sze
Peaches redden on branches; in the dark,
I drop the irrigation gate—each month
a woman crosses Havana Bay and, looking
at the open water, reclaims her mother— [...]
I drop the irrigation gate—each month
a woman crosses Havana Bay and, looking
at the open water, reclaims her mother— [...]
06.05.18
The Cathedral Is a Mouth
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue
The great Gothic cathedrals, with their arches, ribs, and vaults, were modeled after trees in the forest, the way trees reach up and their branches intertwine. [...]
05.15.18
Exposure
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue
Punishment is a poor substitute for justice. When, after all, does punishment end? And what is punishment meant to do? [...]
05.08.18
Three Poems
You still eat roots the way each footstep
put together this hillside
as if it was once a pond and slowly
dried for the afternoon–a simple life [...]
put together this hillside
as if it was once a pond and slowly
dried for the afternoon–a simple life [...]
05.04.18
An Introduction to Richard Powers’ Reading at Bard College
What an honor it is to welcome Richard Powers back to Bard College this afternoon after over a decade since he last read in the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading series. [...]
05.01.18
Three Poems
by Susan Lewis
This is one, hoping to exist. This is one, holding out against zero: its reign of absence, its absolute winter.
Down for the count, which needs or does not need our factories of charge. [...]
Down for the count, which needs or does not need our factories of charge. [...]
04.24.18
By Another Route
by Eric Pankey
One is haunted. Haunted, one must proceed nonetheless with the courtesy of a host. One assumes the ghost is lost and needs to be helped on its way. One sees things others do not see. Or rather, one sees things that others cannot see. [...]
04.17.18
Black Tongue
There was a socket in the wall my mother told me not to touch. The wire innards of the plug spilled out of the unguarded hole. The wires looked like black spaghetti. [...]
04.10.18
Doubts
“And you say they’ve been here how long?”
“We don’t know exactly. Our estimate is a month, approximately. It’s difficult to be sure, we don’t keep tabs on our employees, so it could well be longer, a month and a few days, perhaps.” [...]
“We don’t know exactly. Our estimate is a month, approximately. It’s difficult to be sure, we don’t keep tabs on our employees, so it could well be longer, a month and a few days, perhaps.” [...]
03.27.18
Field Guide
Be the brown bear and the honeybee,
the finch and the squirrel
both too picky for this birdseed. [...]
the finch and the squirrel
both too picky for this birdseed. [...]
03.20.18
Nonpsalms
03.13.18
Three Poems
by Cecily Parks
Come late spring the branches bear
creamy blooms then pulpy orange half-sweet
three- or four-stoned fruits that slip to the dirt
that all things living leave behind, dirt [...]
creamy blooms then pulpy orange half-sweet
three- or four-stoned fruits that slip to the dirt
that all things living leave behind, dirt [...]
02.27.18
Five Poems
by Paul Hoover
You dwell at green lights
longer than expected.
Thoughts that had gone far
are slow in returning. [...]
longer than expected.
Thoughts that had gone far
are slow in returning. [...]
02.20.18
when it happens to you : little white commas
An Excerpt from My Red Heaven
by Lance Olsen
The iridescent blue butterfly flits free of the airship and is catapulted high into the silver light by a rogue gust of wind. [...]
02.13.18
Seven Poems
From Suspension
call me some never mind precisely little interest
off circulation growing about the mouth damp I [...]
off circulation growing about the mouth damp I [...]
01.30.18
A Coalescence
by Michael Ives
From that distance its rifts and fusions across a theater of inexplicable ages sown in [...]
01.23.18
Three Poems
All the fowl, land animals, and fish fear him.
Muslims assert that he had an infidel wife named Waila,
who died in the Deluge, and was thus not aboard the Ark. [...]
Muslims assert that he had an infidel wife named Waila,
who died in the Deluge, and was thus not aboard the Ark. [...]
01.16.18
Three Poems
To sit with you
among the starlings,
yellow-eyed, their
paths hieroglyphic, and
throw some crumbs our way. [...]
among the starlings,
yellow-eyed, their
paths hieroglyphic, and
throw some crumbs our way. [...]
01.02.18
A Sickening, Bucolia
I left him in the wilderness, the scrag that’s left of wilderness—plastic bag choking the gatepost, Styrofoam snow in the farmyard. The wilderness drips down my legs. Mercury, moonlight, multinutrient fertilizer. What we pour on the land in nostalgia. [...]
12.04.17
An Interview
A Selected Text from Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue
For writers: ask yourself how many invisible nonhuman actors and agents are required to enable your tale of individual self-realization or domestic drama, then make those hidden sponsors visible. For readers: let the beauty of whatever book you’ve just read teach you to read the world beyond what we human beings call the real world. [...]
