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

Tuesday poem #684 : Amirah Al Wassif : Ode to Eve

 

 

 

I still recall the last time I spoke to an alien, or perhaps merely imagined it to be so. It happened immediately after the first drops of blood—later known as menstruation—appeared. I curled up in a corner, watching the wall where it walked in transparent attire, playing cards next to a widow spider. I don't know if it was truly a widow, but perhaps my mood at the time made me assume it.
From that moment, I imagined Eve dreaming of the respectable apple. Imagined her exhausted, suffering the cycle. Imagined her startled by the fact of her femaleness. I saw her in my mind attempting to flee the obsessive-compulsive disorder, the doubt, and the petty anxieties. Imagining herself pregnant, her belly immense, and her legs swollen from fluid retention. I pictured her with one eye open and one eye closed, like a resting wolf.
Then the alien suddenly stung me; I opened my eyes and found it wearing Adam's mask, recounting the familiar story from the perspective of the victim who fell into the trap of temptation

 

 

 

 

Amirah Al Wassif is an award-winning poet and published author. Her poetry collection For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate was published in February 2019 by Poetic Justice Books & Arts, followed by the illustrated children’s book The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories in February 2020. In 2022, Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company released her poetry collection How to Bury a Curious Girl, and her latest collection, The Rules of Blind Obedience, was published in December 2024.

Her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications, including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now, Reckoning, New Welsh Review, and Event Magazine, among others.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan