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December 2023

Cover Artist: Carlo Cadenas
I ask you to find a better song; a louder song, a sweeter song—
 Frank Marshall Davis
  • Li-Young Lee
  • Ben Okri
  • Jacqueline Johnson
  • Ricki Cummings
  • Jenny Zhang
Table of Contents

From this Issue

Poem

p1

Juke

By Diane Seuss
What kind of juke do you prefer?
For me, it’s the kind with three
songs and thirty-seven blank
title strips. Three songs, and two...
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Poem

p1

Song of the Blue Ridge Mountains

By Susan Nguyen
In the south we gather like thunderheads: urgent & heavy: make friends in every room: blue jeans stain on the walls: I kiss many lovers & not lovers: thumb blackberries from the ravine into our purpled mouths: at night I walk into dark places with strangers: part tall grasses buoyant: the first year we flock from one lit-up house...
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Poem

p1

The Metaphysics of Your Presence

By Robert Bernard Hass
A fragment. To be followed by an infinitive phrase.
Your hipster cynical voice. One. Then two. Then three words.
In sequence. Subject without predicate. Running to passion
(Predicate without subject). The obligatory foreign phrase...
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Table of Contents

Poems
As Direct As Good Blues: Frank Marshall Davis
CONTRIBUTORS
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