published in Cordella Magazine, Issue 7 What I Wanted by Margaret Chula All my life, I wanted to ride bareback on a tiger through the jungles of Borneo, to race by warthogs gorging on pineapples, past headhunters with their poisonous darts sheathed, mouths agape. I wanted to outstrip Lady Godiva—her everlasting tresses, her smirk of satisfaction shocking even Adam and Eve as they cavorted in their own pleasure. I wanted to be a swan on a lake in Shangri-La, folding my wings a

Good morning! Although only 14% of Americans live in rural areas, most of us are not far from horses. Horse-drawn carriages, police horses, riding schools, horse racing, state fair rodeos, parades, pony rides, and therapy horses allow people not living near horses that work on farms and ranches to see them regularly. Besides seeing actual horses, our language is filled with idioms and phrases that involve horses. From the horse power of cars to being so hungry you can eat a h

Love Letter to a Dead Body by Jake Skeets published in Boston Review, 2018 we lay each other down in the burr and sage bottles jangle us awake cirrhosis moon for eye memories cough our young fists up trying to set ourselves on fire dressing ourselves in black smoke just as our cousins did one by one after the other

Forget-Me-Nots by Megan Merchant published in Breakwater, Issue 23 Today, my mother forgot the word for bathroom while she was in one. She said dry room, no—wet room, no— tell me, then what are the others called. I’d like to walk them. At one point, someone taught me a word I’ve forgotten. A room I was already inside. A marriage. A country. A war. A man’s fingers cuffed around my wrist. Someone promised— it is common, when learning another language, to lose pieces of your mot

Check out today's poem from Jellyfish Magazine: "Marry Me" by Lindsey Webb. Now write a poem in which the speaker tells someone why they cannot possibly accept a marriage proposal. Your speaker can be addressing the person who proposed or a confidante. Your speaker can be reacting in the present to the question just asked, or can be explaining a past decision. Either way, be both specific and strange (again, see today's blog poem).

Marry Me by Lindsey Webb; published in Jellyfish Magazine, 2015 I am like a flower that won't stop opening and closing. I scare all the scientists. Our bed a soft table. In my dream you and I take off our clothes with a potato peeler, becoming flesh one curly strip at a time. In the morning there will be everything left. I admit I have freed myself from beautiful things. Raspberries, children, the white telephone. The sound of mania on the horizon, rolling upwards like an eye

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye by Albert Goldbarth published in his book, The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007 Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you're tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your

California Gestalt by Jessica Yuan published in New Delta Review, Issue 11.2 How small the rains that feed that city, that settle its dust and high flat glare: city leaning back in its chair against the Coastal Ranges, city paved smooth and level to the concrete drain, the channelized river. So little of it and so confined. I went past every morning and also believed there was One Way to manage land and water, to follow its inscriptions, downhill, Mountains-to-Sea—

Irregular verbs are the bane of foreign language students, no matter what language you are trying to learn. I have had students from all over the globe, many of them extraordinarily proficient at English grammar, completely bewildered by irregular verbs in English, and wanting desperately for me to provide a reason behind and an easy way to remember. As far as I know, there are none. Sorry! For this week's very simple writing prompt, I want you to create a piece that uses thr

Freeway 280 by Lorna Dee Cervantes Las casitas near the gray cannery, nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses and man-high red geraniums are gone now.The freeway conceals it all beneath a raised scar. But under the fake windsounds of the open lanes, in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout, wild mustard remembers, old gardens come back stronger than they were, trees have been left standing in their yards. Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . . Viejitas come here wi

Today's blog poem by Amy Lowell, "A Little Song," uses end rhyme. When Lowell was writing, end rhyme was the norm. However, this was changing--free verse was starting to become the dominant form. (My end rhyme here was unintentional. I am leaving it in!) Lowell wrote in the old traditional way and the new (ish--this is post-Whitman, et al) unrhymed free verse. Her contemporaries tended to write in one way or the other, but she managed both. If you want to read one of her free

A Little Song by Amy Lowell When you, my Dear, are away, away, How wearily goes the creeping day. A year drags after morning, and night Starts another year of candle light. O Pausing Sun and Lingering Moon! Grant me, I beg of you, this boon. Whirl round the earth as never sun Has his diurnal journey run. And, Moon, slip past the ladders of air In a single flash, while your streaming hair Catches the stars and pulls them down To shine on some slumbering Chinese town. O Kindly

Tiny Ghost Bundle by Bridget Clawson published in Hobo Camp Review, Winter Issue # 33 -- Featuring a poetry tribute to Tom Petty Do you remember the Heartbreaker concert in 1990? It is always with me since you died. Today I arrived at the coroner’s office to collect your death certificate. I told the clerk your name – such a painful sound, my beloved. She asked me if I heard the news that Tom Petty just died, and she wept. Other clerks were discussing a tiny ghost bundle