Poem of the Day

The Anabasis of Godspeed

Issue 229, Summer 2019

i.
Now these were the embarkations they made to the holy places of egypt sinai
palestine and syria in the years of furies 1916–17 unto the last 1918. Godspeed under the schoolyard’s cherry tree scrawled his anabasis marred by dust and the red smell of the sea.

ii.
Disembarked for alexandria shuck camp and enchained at moascar and proceeded to el
ferdan where it dechained and proceeded to reduit camp where it encamped and took over duties and post defenses in the sun.

iii.
And was shuck off the strength accordingly. england. Heavy-clouded. That was the month of
the death of the late Field Marshal Right Honourable H. H. Earl Kitchener of Khartoum K.G. G.C.B. O.M. G.C.S.I. G.C.M.G. G.C.I.E. Colonel Commandant Royal Engineers Colonel Irish Guards Secretary of State for war that for a period of one week officers of the army shall wear mourning with their uniforms on this melancholy occasion. The boy wiped cherry on his lionized shirt in bad faith.

Anxious Dreams

By Jonathan Aaron

How lucky I am tonight to be holding a lantern
at this railroad crossing in the middle of America
and not clinging to a leaky raft on the north Atlantic,

Two Poems

By Jonathan Aaron

In 1027, not far from Bernburg,
eighteen peasants were seized
by a common delusion.

Off–White

By Hanif Abdurraqib

my boys & I refused to believe it was Michael who didn’t make it through the night even though the cameras strewn across the sky showed the mansion lawn specked with red sirens & from my own covers I imagined him to be simply asleep the way I slept

Two Poems

By Susan Abraham

When the man can’t sleep, he builds
a matchstick replica of Auschwitz
in his basement, working from memory.

how to cut a throat

By Sam Abrams

most people have absolutely the wrong idea of how to go about cutting a throat, the right way to do it on animals anatomically similar to humans such as dogs, sheep, veal calves and very young pigs—emphatically not on full-grown pigs