Mag Gabbert
maybe we find ships
Romantic because that word is
both a noun and a verb

I once took a trip
on a cruise with an Olympic-
sized pool that floated flat
above the sea

then my grandmother
and I took a ferry to the shore
to look at gardens

her blood sugar dipped low
and she forgot what to call
the flowers or the city
we were in Oslo

she kept asking
are we doing the right thing

now her thoughts trail
behind me like
a wake
I keep on crossing

other nouns that are verbs
sinktreat wish

maybe I want
an out-of-body experience
like hers

beamblossom
fathomlure

even when you and I
fall asleep holding hands
I stilldriftaway I flotsam

I smell the stems the floating leaves
a vase of my grandmother's
even though it sits empty

and you say it's okay
to cut some things
away from their body

I'm at the edge
of a pier before morning
reeling and casting

I think

how often has the vessel
of this body
been filled up to its lip

buoyslip
from the book SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS / Mad Creek Books
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This poem deals with some of the earliest subject matter included in my collection SEX DEPRESSION ANIMALS. The opening anecdote recalls an experience I had with my grandmother when I was nine; she’d suddenly become confused and disoriented as the two of us strolled through Oslo, Norway, and I found myself trying to navigate our way back to the ship we’d disembarked from through an unfamiliar city where I couldn’t speak the language.
Cover image of Anthony Anaxagorou's new book, Heritage Aesthetics
Poet Anthony Anaxagorou Talks to Peter Mishler

"How can we repeat a determined pattern and yet land in strikingly different and sometimes antithetical places? This says to me that language-making (like consciousness) is a fluid, uncertain, and often chaotic process, one which invites ambiguity, disorder, and digression. Within those categories we find the contours of a poem or atmosphere which itself is almost aquatic; an immersive, private experience that asks readers to step in, like one would a bath or a room."

via LITHUB
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Cover image of Allison Cobb's book, After We All Died
What Sparks Poetry:
Allison Cobb on "For love"

"As a writer, I have been obsessed with the complexities of my origins, having been born and raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the town that built the first atomic bombs, and which remains the location of one of the nation’s three main nuclear weapons labs. Planetary legacies of damage and death stem from this place. How did this happen?"
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