Poetry – US Represented

Polygraph

Eric Stephenson — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 08:19:30 +0000

We should all take a polygraph test every day and share our results with the rest of the world, maybe on Facebook or something, or we could invent a new online platform designed for this express purpose and chaperon a new revolution. It’s hard to be impeccably honest, especially about ourselves. All too often, false memory, insecurity, and ego blur reality, which means thought and action degenerate into confabulation and

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A Thanksgiving Day Present

Eric Stephenson — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 17:00:47 +0000

If you’re all alone on Thanksgiving Day, with no turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy, your heart aching from loneliness and neglect, and your shame keeping you from making even one single phone call to some relative who is surrounded by devoted loved ones, just keep in mind that, for what it’s worth, we’re together in this poem, sharing these words. Sleepy late-afternoon football chatter will fade away, but this conversation will last

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The Seeds of Thanksgiving

a featured contributor — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 16:07:52 +0000

In May I poke eleven pie pumpkin seeds into dirt. I bless them into a star shape in that limed bed, another year. I wonder if I’ll be here at harvest. I haul myself up, grab onto a rusted scaffold for the vines to climb, drape into the summer winds, mingle with wrens. Glad to be here as their heart leaves sway into dry Augusts and mildew in September. Today

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The Deep Rich Soil

Eric Stephenson — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 08:49:26 +0000

I dug for you in the deep rich soil, my hands plunging further and further into the ground, into the past, searching for traces of your soul, only to find a decayed, unreadable letter.

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I Have Been a Stranger to My Garden

a featured contributor — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 21:39:04 +0000

I peer out the sunroom window at the hydrangeas encroaching on the arborvitae, on the camelia — and just now in mid-November when the tight buds of the camelia are grasping at every bit of waning sun they can to bloom and the arborvitae is struggling to spread its branches; next month they’ll be the only green in the garden. They can’t do this by themselves. How can I disturb

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in your honor

a featured contributor — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 14:50:14 +0000

you moved that dial from comfort to gone, something compelling you drawing you to firing line and desert sands or some great field with thorns and you wrote a letter to that love you left and she cried on its ink, staining an image of loss, nonetheless, she drew on you. you moved in line to beats that we can’t know having not stepped out, having not been there, but

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