Tuesday poem #604 : Joseph Donato : Traffic Jam

 

 

I saw a bus poster for that movie you liked
I’m writing this because I couldn’t tell you
What do I do with these moments 
that aren’t supposed to have meaning anymore

I miss the traffic between our cities
Do you know how sad I must be 
to miss traffic

 

 

 

 

Joseph Donato is super cool & popular. He is Editor-in-Chief of Block Party and Overlord of Horror Pop Mag. His stories and poems have appeared in The Ampersand Review, The Foundationalist, and The Hart House Review, among others. His debut chapbook, Toothache, was published by above/ground press in 2023. Joseph enjoys horror, Weezer, and string.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #603 : Han VanderHart : I Like to Think Emily Dickinson Would Read The Ethical Slut under an Umbrella by the Pool

 

 

that she’d sext so cryptically
& well—sending the words 

“Dispatch from Finitude”
accompanied by a nude

(dusk falling and her
bare hips against a quilt)

that her first video
touching herself she shared

with the bees
and Higginson, in that order

to make him gasp
(the bees already knew)

and the lines: “what it means
for poetry to breathe”

that with Susan she shared
her tongue and all of June

that she pollinated Amherst
face first, ass out, dusted with pollen

while cultivating her privacy
with abandon

that she had more lovers even
than she had poems, which numbered 

just under 1800      

Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their manuscript Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025) received the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, judged by Chanda Feldman. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #602 : Marilyn Bowering : The Invisible Life of Feeling

 

 

                     for Xan

And there had been the resentment of being strangers in a strange land,
separated from their identities while unable to go back.
                                                                                     Kapka Kassabova

We were drawn towards birth by birds, they say,
the link between us weightless and invisible,
and learned the world of water from above,
its touch on our skulls as rainfall, and
which hunter-haunted marshes to avoid
and where to land and rest.

We learned the meaning of shadows.

Epictetus says do not ask the athlete how much weight they lift,
but look at the shoulders - the hidden strength
in half-light in the morning when they rise to stretch,
pinion muscle supporting arms, body-hair like feathers.

Light fills my daughter’s window - it is summer,
much hallooing from birds when she runs by,
alive together with the earth for this brief time.

I read Seneca at my desk: As things are, isn’t it the height of folly
to learn inessential things when times are so desperately short!
I glance up as she re-enters the house, and hear Seneca
in his printed land, crying: Is this the way to heaven?

A jug on a table is placed to keep our souls, they say:
but one sweep with a hairbrush I found in a dream this morning
returned my hair to dark, and she and I watched storks
fly to their nests on the rooftops of Calle Ciudad de Ronda
at sunset when everyone was young.

 

 

 

Marilyn Bowering [photo credit: Xan Shian] is a novelist, poet and non-fiction writer. Her latest book is More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod (MQUP 2024), a literary investigation, memoir and mediation on poetry. She lives on Vancouver Island with her extended family. marilynbowering.com

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan