Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Tuesday poem #629 : Louise Akers : To a career hunter

 

         

Appraising as if only 
for insurance purposes 

some keening squirrel, my sight

hound 

guarantees the regular abandonment 

of tumorous and gnawed-green 

Osage-oranges, 

eaten out at the foot 

of this or that Himalayan White 

Pine. 

Colleen at spin class says to kill
the small green orange eaters “will cost

you two hundred fifty bucks 

a pop” in fines. Her husband, Friend  

of Fort Greene Park, is

quarantined in Amagansett 

through the long weekend. It’s important 
to ensure local eco-

perpetuity; it’s impossible 

to outrun the keenness of 
my hound. Her career

assessment spreads athletically 

and undiscerning over 

every local incident  

of flesh-that-burrows under 

twenty or so ounces. 

These furry pollinators, she observes, 
whose collective estates 

must hold

environmental significance, and whose 

contraband selves and celebratory

downed fruit spell liability 

for esurient arrivals even when

she comes reliably 

on lead.

 

 

 

Louise Akers is a poet and scholar living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of two books of poetry, Alien Year (Oversound, 2020) and Elizabeth/The story of Drone (Propeller Books, 2022). Akers is currently pursuing her PhD in English and American Literature at NYU.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Tuesday poem #628 : Sean Howard : Poems (lifted from the Manchester Guardian, October 6, 1913)

 

ALBANIANS DRIVEN OUT OF SERVIA
Forty Executions – Including a Boy

ARTILLERY IN AN AEROPLANE
Target Practice in France

SPECTATOR CARRIED OFF BY A BALLOON

*

Modern war, driven stakes… Man & boy, the porous b-
order? (Skim reading: from on high, territory as
map.) Safe below? The suddenly inflating
spectacles…

 

 

 

 

Sean Howard is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Overlays: Scored Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2025). His poetry has been widely published in Canada, the US, UK, and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday, April 08, 2025

Tuesday poem #627 : Siân Killingsworth : Severed Connection

 

 

I have never met the people I see every day.
On the white shelf behind my head
in the Zoom square grows beautiful green moss.
I could shave it off with even a butter knife. Eat
the moss, dream the greenness.

My brain is in a mood to tell me bad stories.
She’s hot and mean, filling me with dread
of failure, dread of people close to me
and it’s hard to breathe. I can’t listen.

Look at the desk, multiple screens. I’m feeling
my hands, sweat-damp lines, trace of oily lotion,
rings too tight from too much salt,
switch to a razor. Cut through the fog
of brain-lies and let in screeching light.
What I could have been without this.

 

 

 

Siân Killingsworth is the author of Hiraeth (Longship Press, 2024). She has been published in Columbia Poetry Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), and elsewhere, including When There Are Nine, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute anthology. Siân is the Social Media Manager for the Rise Up Review. She holds an MFA from The New School.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan