Tuesday poem #687 : Melanie Power : learner’s permits

 

waxed floor     dim gym
quarter moon     sweaty palms
love-starved     school dance
sneaker screeches     small town
shortest month     junior year
string eyebrows     mom’s lipstick
calgon body mist     holey socks
nokia photos    hairspray lungs
160-character texts     mousse curls
spaghetti-strapped     electro-pop
home team chants     teacher scowls
fluorescent tubes    washroom swigs
tart apple    cousin’s vodka    
dancefloor marionettes     eyes closed
cargo pants     visible thongs
frosted tips     tanning bed-bronze
timbaland beats     stagnant air
blood rush     new touch
real-life sims     colliding tongues
hot crotch     teeth whops
lost thoughts    penny drop
deserted streets     stolen smokes
walk home     shallow puffs
snowy shoulders     blow pop
red nose     blue razzberry lips
stars above     bubble-gum wad
drawn bow     sagittarius’s arrow
unmade beds     pierced hearts

 

 

 

 

Melanie Power is a Montreal-based poet from St. John's. She is the author of Full Moon of Afraid and Craving (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #686 : Dagne Forrest : Body of Sand Cento

 

 

At the water’s edge—as at the edge of ruin,
the sorrow of laundromats, of so much noise,
newsprint and smoke dispelled by the wind—
the sand was not what they said, but
alive and fresh, a wish made flesh. 

Other, other
                               where have you gone?

Now you smell like salt,
like something hidden and curled
at sea. You, on the road:
dim yellow, like despondent gold,
every step is a step into absence. 

Other, other
                               where have you gone?

The bay keeps bluing and re-bluing.
Water tastes differently every time,
the copper poison on my tongue sweet:
this is breath again,
oyster-pink lungs, a body of water. 

Other, other
                               where have you gone?

You who were and were not,
you must continue
shaken or stirred, bright or broken,
in the teeth of
 the memory of air.

 

 

The lines in this poem are from: “Faintly, with Falling Stars”, Carl Phillips; “Los Angeles, Fin de Siècle”, Maurya Simon; “A Body Drawn By Its Own Memory”, Kate Colby; “Children, The Sandbar, That Summer”, Muriel Rukeyser; “Call as You Will”, Todd Boss; “The Disappeared”, Cecilia Vicuña; “Night Study”, Kelly Gray; “After Antonio Machado”, Robert Pinsky; “A Single Woman’s Bedroom”, Yi Lei; “NOCTURNE”, Hila Ratzabi; “Moon Pull”, Carlina Duan; “Off the coast of Ithaca”, Fiona Hartmann; “Water”, Eloise Klein Healy; “dreamsongs for two working feet”, jessica popeski; “Inhibit”, Kate Sweeney; “Sono”, Suji Kwock Kim; “Mixed Media”, Kathryn Petruccelli; “Character Questionnaire for a Stranger (You) Who Enters a Poem”, Charlotte Pence; “Never to Dream of Spiders”, Audre Lorde; “Tone poem 4”, Bob Hicok.

 

 

 

 

Dagne Forrest’s poetry has appeared most recently in The New Quarterly, Funicular Magazine, Rust + Moth, Tar River Poetry, Rogue Agent, Prism International, and elsewhere. In 2023 she won first prize in the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest run by The New Quarterly. She was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize by Maggie Smith. She is Managing Editor of Painted Bride Quarterly. Her chapbooks include Un/becoming (Baseline Press, 2025) and the forthcoming Falldown Lane (Whittle Micropress, 2026).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #685 : Ben Berman Ghan : $2[.]75

 

Help!
I                   know            going
          Don’t           what’s           on.
A dog keeps barking in my
Head & the movements of
His tails say all things are
Within reach without cases
          Oh
                     My god
Does your husband know about
Penmanship?
                     Oh
          My god
Three decades scratching out in pleasing
Ink.
          I thought to part with pennies
For the sake of smiles and silly things
                               What
                     Do you mean this
          Pen costs nearly 300$
Pfffffffffff — oops
All my inks I take for free

 

 

 

 

Ben Berman Ghan is the author of The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Buckrider Books 2024), as well as Behold the Dead (Anstruther Press 2025), Visitation Seeds (845 Press 2020), and What We See in the Smoke (Crowsnest books 2019) His second collection of fiction, The Library Cosmic, is forthcoming with Buckrider Books for spring 2026. His prose, poetry, and criticism have previously been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Ex-Puritan, and The Ancillary Review of Books, and has been reprinted in such anthologies as Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction. His work has won the Foreword INDIES Award for Science Fiction, and longlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, Ben is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary, where he lives with his partner and two cats. Find him at inkstainedwreck.ca

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan