Poems

“I read the line over and over / as if I might discern / the little fires set / the flames of an idea licking the page”

“Illumination,” Natasha Trethewey

Sestina for My Mother | Poetry

by TNSF | Aug 28, 2019 | Poems, Vol. 2, Issue 21

Atlanta Writer’s Club Presents… The Natasha Trethewey Prize for Poetry Winner: Elizabeth Bracken Sestina for My Mother When I was four, I would sit in a brown wooden chair in the kitchen and my mother would braid my hair. Then she would turn...

Cultivation | Poetry

by TNSF | Jul 31, 2019 | Poems, Vol. 2, Issue 19

Cultivation Why do our bodies make things they do not need? Seeds from a fast food kids’ meal in a backyard whiskey barrel make juicy little red globes on the vine. Replication is supposed to be a highly regulated routine, a pageant of proteins and cytoskeletal...

Malaisonaisse | Poetry

by TNSF | Jun 19, 2019 | Poems, Vol. 2, Issue 16

Malaisonaisse “Squash is an excellent conveyer of butter,” my friend said. The strangest things go in and come out when he opens his head, watching fat-spackled beef bricks and spit hit the coals as barbecue sauce drips from ribs and wings and fingers and...

In Appalachia, Living a Spectacle | Poetry

by TNSF | May 8, 2019 | Poems, Vol. 2, Issue 13

We heard that the war was coming. We heard we were the victims & we were the perpetrators & we were the problem & we were the future. We heard a television man was coming with his camera & his vest & his eyes squinting against a hatless skyglare....

Etymology of Denial | Poetry

by TNSF | Apr 24, 2019 | Poems, Vol. 2, Issue 12

Not, in fact, a river wedgedthrough Africa, but instead a hamletin Northwest Ohio. The mayor speaksGerman, as does the teacher, and the priestand the children, and even the Moroccanwho moved in the previous year. Alleyways do not exist in Denial: you’re either a...

The Happening | Poetry

by TNSF | Apr 10, 2019 | Poems, Vol. 2, Issue 11

My mother would drive us to the Laundromaton Saturday mornings. I’d sit in the backof her old green Volvobetween baskets of blue, yellow, and pink.She’d sing “Where Did Our Love Go”with Diana Ross and The Supremes on the radio.We’d park under the washed-out sign. This...