Pieces from My Heart: Chaos and Art

The American Poetry Review

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Five Poems

May 1, 2023

Let’s be GodFor a moment, Shall we?That which invites Composition,That which is suspended From a great height,The presence Of approximationHeavy in the meadows, I’m not afraid,And yet My shroud vanishesIn these lines, I am so weptPast weeping, And wh

The American Poetry Review

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Two Poems

Sep 1, 2023

This poem is for everyperson who will neverread it either by choiceor circumstance I writeit in silence wherethe most realparts of our liveslive like a shoe lostin an alley or an emptyboat in a black sea butmore like the fallenleaf on the other sideo

The American Poetry Review

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Five Poems

Nov 1, 2022

Animals that moveon small, short legs. Sand that sucks inanything / anyone. Something seenthrough a torn screen I hadn’t expected it. We all havethese genesthese sequencesof numbers I don’t knowhow they arewhat they are. This is youevery dayright now

The American Poetry Review

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Two Poems

Nov 1, 2021

I have an endless appetite for starfruit,for biting my teeth into the universe and spitting outthe space junk, for licking the rings of my favorite planetsand never slicing my tongue. There’s a story I shareabout my birth where angels circle my dead

The American Poetry Review

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Two Poems

Jan 1, 2022

cook lobster. They’re loyal sea rubies and deservebetter than a pinch of lemon and herbed butter. But I’ll shower hot enough to brighten you, makezinnias of your shoulders and steal the towels when it’s over, your water-tattooed back a garden before

Harper's Bazaar India

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Summer: A Love Story

Apr 20, 2021

It is a squalid time. The body grows tired of being a body. Sweat. Always. A thin film of it on the skin. Do not say dewy. Do not say glisten. I dream of endless green. Of wet. Of rain hammering the Earth. Of buds sprouting. I want to insist on life

Writing Magazine

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Little Blue

Feb 1, 2024

Isla Blackley is from Glasgow, Scotland. She was shortlisted for the writing competition for the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival in 2022 and came second in the 2022 Mountaineering Scotland Writing Competition. ‘Little Blue’ is her third publishe

The American Poetry Review

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Four Poems

Nov 1, 2022

Day after Thanksgiving. I give thanks for Eveto beat the rush of appreciating hernext year and let her sleep inuntil three hundred o’clock.Thank you light on the mountainfor being my star on cloudy nights.Thank you all the guns I’ve never ownedand ki

The Paris Review

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Exhaling

Dec 7, 2021

Around me are fifty or so men, in whose company I will sit and be silent for ten days. I eye them discreetly, wondering who among them is going through a crisis. Who, like me, has a family. Who’s single, who’s been dumped, who’s poor or unhappy. Who’

The American Poetry Review

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Seven Poems

Sep 1, 2021

The dancersIn a terribly brightLight blue gauzeRetained the mystery Skating on a lakeBlue and iceAn illusionary timeWhere poetry feels inevitable The terrific clownWho lies insideEvery blue dressDoes he see me Always a starAlways a rootHorrible auras

The American Poetry Review

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Two Poems

Nov 1, 2019

It’s soothing when the newly dead are way older than I am. This guy was 95. His picture—middle-aged, archaic glasses—freezes him somewhere around 1970. But even when they are my age and live in my town and share so many of my habits and interests tha

The American Scholar

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Five Poems

Dec 1, 2022

You have to first Sit in the temple gloom In the mahogany chair & despair. The only glimmer In the temple (being the inlaid bits of The Mother-Of-Pearl shells On the tall, more than humanly tall Chair back, for these These too Are the reputed “Tears

The American Poetry Review

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The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Jan 1, 2020

My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

New Internationalist

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Home

Feb 25, 2019

I once lived in a yellow little house. Each morning, birds convened and sang at my bedroom window. The gate was indigo and inside the garden all kinds of flowers rose to kiss the sunny walls. The yellow nest was filled with cherished books, colourful

The Writer

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For Want Of Time And Distance

Aug 14, 2021

I said goodbye to my beloved dog the day before this issue went to press. Like many writers, I am the designated eulogist in my family. It’s an act I take seriously, even for pets, who will go to the grave without much pomp and circumstance beyond a

The Paris Review

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Two Poems by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Jun 15, 2018

And, after the explosion, made spheres sing,A pure expression of pure poetry,Like rising rain or a nation with noFlag—. Something that whispers as the airDoes just before the lightning comes. A pureExpression of the breaks in the blank lakesOn Neptun

The American Poetry Review

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Three Poems

Jul 1, 2020

Beneath your skin, a floodof glass is surfacing. It means I stayalone for years during your weekin the hospital. You breathe like rosehips crushed, mouth too muddy to believe. I’m one to talk.The stylist asks if I want my liesto show through. I wade