Tuesday poem #689 : Kristin Lueke : i got where i was going but not before i changed

 

 

“I’m writing to you
all the time”
—Franz Wright

 

you may be moved to discover on a train
to stockholm you hadn’t planned on—
the other one having burst into flames
the station before you boarded in malmö—
you actually quite enjoy a thing
you'd previously dismissed, for instance 

the poetry of a dead drunk austrian,
yourself, black tea with bergamot.
confronting that you might consider
spiders, sparrows, meditation, surviving
surprise or a gesture, a ticket, an engine
ablaze, a world weary with trying, my god—
            all this love you may have missed.

 

 

 

Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet living in northern New Mexico. She is the author of the chapbooks (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press) and here i show you a human heart. Her work appears in Sixth Finch, Wildness, HAD, Mizna, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere. She writes at www.theanimaleats.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #688 : Lisa Fishman : 1975

 

 

 

Bats become girlfriends 

(their fluttering sleeves) 

 

You know those two 

playing stickball in the alley – 

 

me & Mary 

in the twilight 

 

saying little

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Fishman is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently One Big Time (Wave Books, 2025). Her debut novel, Write Back Now!, was recently released by 1366 Books, an imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions. The novel has a connection to “1975”, the poem published here. Fishman’s collection of stories, World Naked Bike Ride was published by Gaspereau Press in 2022 and was shortlisted for the ReLit Award in Short Fiction. Her poetry and prose have been published and anthologized in Granta, jubilat, Volt, American Letters & Commentary, A Public Space, Best American Experimental Poetry, Aradia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, The Ecopoetry Anthology and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. A dual US/Canadian with roots in both Montreal and Detroit, Fishman divides her time between Eastern Canada and her farm in Wisconsin.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
 

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