Tuesday poem #615 : Maria Hardin : Devotion IV

 

 

be your own pony
your own mother
birth a world without fathers
lose yourself in the holy ghost

the cosmos is withdrawing
but we just want to keep on touching

as longing impregnates
the soil
the humidity
our lungs

as wild brains lag
as wild horses cease to exist

 

 

 

Maria Hardin is a Swedish-American artist and bilingual poet based in Stockholm. She is the author of Cute Girls Watch When I Eat Aether (Action Books) and Sprawl Coquette (Creative Writing Department). Maria’s work has been exhibited across Scandinavia and her writing has appeared in American Chordata, Burning House Press, Denver Quarterly, Fanzine, Gutter, LIGEIA Magazine, SLFFCK, Spam Zine, Spectra Poetry, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She can be found at mariaology.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #614 : Catriona Strang : Cattle, sheep, crops, money

 

It’s been the ruttiest
week, all peaky looking
rust bins and how did I even
get here, as the man with the hip
flask barges over and links arms
with global trade? What if jute sang, or
cotton or iron, ships or steel, a defence
unpicked by a chip just drunk enough
to be fierce in this communal
game played in a rebel’s self-
washed kit now glorified by
empire’s trade in myth, prejudice
and illusion – nought’s had, all’s
spent – so we flew into
our new enemy, at Brockton Oval as at
Stirling Bridge, our basket-weave
adaptation taking shape
on the fly: tackle him low!

 

 

 

A founding member of the Institute for Domestic Research, Catriona Strang is the author of Low Fancy, Corked, Reveries of a Solitary Biker, and Unfuckable Lardass and co-author of Busted, Cold Trip, and Light Sweet Crude with the late Nancy Shaw, whose selected works, The Gorge, she edited. A new chapbook appears next week with above/ground press.

She frequently collaborates with composer Jacqueline Leggatt, and lives with her two grown kids on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Lands. She is recovering from decades of caring labour.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #613 : Dag T. Straumsvåg : MORNING PHASE

 

            for Angella

She drew our kitchen with fresh coffee in the pot and breakfast on the table. Bread, butter, brown cheese, scrambled eggs. Flowers on the window sill, a blue sky above the trees. I sat down, poured the coffee, buttered a slice of bread, and as I reached for the platter of scrambled eggs, she erased it between my fingers. Then erased the rest. Erased me. And drew me again, this time on the front porch, with her at my side. “I thought you were at the office?” I say. “I am. I’m at my desk” she says, “working.” We sit quietly for a while, looking out at the garden. I’ve never seen it this beautiful. Peacocks, elephants, Jacarandas in bloom, a rainbow between two Catalpa trees. “Tomorrow it’s my turn to draw,” I say.

 

 

 

Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator of ten books of poetry, including Nelson (Proper Tales Press, 2017), But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024), and The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025). He runs the small press A + D with his girlfriend, the artist and graphic designer Angella Kassube. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan