Tuesday poem #658 : Ian Lockaby : Super Ego Holding

 

 

a-
          ccumulations
of us softening 

, braided in
through the fine hog 

furs running in-
ward our nipples to
milk ducts    of our hearts 

where love itself
as a form of ideal milk
bounces
in the tremors 

of the bad oats
re-      wilded and 

extracting inebriat-
ions from the violin 

monks emerged
from dark cavities of white 

hot peppers scattered
fresh in the gutters
after microscopic parades 

every time     evening
inclines towards you

 

 

 

Ian U Lockaby is the the author of Defensible Space/if a crow— (Omnidawn, 2024), and A Seam of Electricity (Ghost Proposal, 2025). Recent work can be found in Fence, West Branch, Noir Sauna, Washington Square Review, Poetry Daily, etc. His translation of Mexican poet Diana Garza Islas was recently published by Carrion Bloom Books. He edits the online journal mercury firs and lives in New Orleans.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #657 : Jamella Hagen : Shiny Silver Train

 

 

Some nights
lately
when I try
to work 

my heart
is caged
in a Soviet-era
subway car 

travelling
deep underground
at high speed
noisily. 

You want
efficiency?
asks the mouth
of the dark tunnel; 

meanwhile,
little steel wheels
screech and grind
against the track. 

I cover my ears,
it’s not enough.
But I suppose
the engineers 

weren’t wrong.
We are getting
somewhere
after all, 

and fast—
we’re almost
to the next station
which could double 

as a bomb shelter
should we need one 

and the longest
escalator 

in the world
will carry us
into daylight.

 

 

Jamella Hagen’s first collection of poetry, Kerosene, was published by Nightwood Editions and her second collection, Perfect Weather, is forthcoming with Gaspereau Press in spring of 2026. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Yukon University, and is an affiliate poetry editor with the Alaska Quarterly Review. Her poetry has won The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry. Recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Canadian Literature, and The Globe and Mail. She lives with her eleven-year-old son, Rowan, on the traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council in Whitehorse, Yukon.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #656 : Eva Haas : After you I walk through the desert, pretend I’m a pilgrim

 

 

I am a woman in the same way
a skull in the desert remains a deer. You can hear
echoes of the sky in me. I spend
many nights drinking from cacti, contemplating disaster.
I try not to remember your hips in my lap
like milk in a spoon. 

One day I become sane again – or something
just like it – and come to a crack in the earth, see your face
on a billboard for skin smoothing cream. I can barely feel
my cratered cheeks. I thought after the end
there should be nothing left, not even
a delirious advertisement. But the sky still flickers
with purple thunder, plays reruns
of the charm on your neck. 

 

 

 

 

 

Eva Haas is a queer artist and poet originally from Ktaqmkuk (St. John's, Newfoundland). She has recently completed a BA in Writing at the University of Victoria and her term as Victoria's eleventh Youth Poet Laureate. Her work has been a finalist for competitions at CBC, Room and Frontier, and can be found in The Malahat Review and Riddle Fence.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan