New Poetry with Audio!

Donald Revell
Stephen Burt
Paul Hoover
Jonah Winter
Cathy Wagner
Reginald Shepherd
Nin Andrews
Sophia Kartsonis
Sandra Miller
Joshua Harmon
Devin Johnston
Chuck Zerby
Sara Henning
Ognjen Smiljanic
Lance Phillips
Peter Drake
Kathleen Byrne
Ernest Hilbert
Garth Greenwell
Marc McKee

Criticism

Brian Henry on Kinsella
Gabriel Welsch on Northrop
Gabriel Welsch on Smith
Cecily Iddings on Ruefle
Christopher McDermott on Wenderoth

Zan Ross is author of the recently-released en passant (Fremantle Arts Centre Press).

Intentions

She never meant: 

            tied to the bed,

            begging for the whip.

If she knows the back

of his head well,  cigarette smoke

obscures thought.  

His dick drags

the sheet when he turns to

burn her thigh,

twist her breast.

And though she is silent,

hopes for

something    more,

he unknots silk, says

'Come again tomorrow.'

She slides away,

steps    into her dress.

He's too available –

there won't be

another time.

He didn't push a knife

into her throat,

and that      

         was what she really wanted.

Rubber Hose

You see it as Anaconda,

have fantasies

           of dressing to the right and

left,      wrapping it around a cable reel,

r-o-l-l-i-n-g   it

                             down

                                        the

street.

I see it as something more

fri-en-dly –

 P Y T H O N  or c      et sn

                             arp        ake  eating

the nibble mice that foul   the BREAD.

Could be

an Alabama black snake,

resting s l e e k along my thigh, or

wrapped glittering 'round my e-

                                           lon-

gated 

neck,

Masai style, warning off  STRANGERS.

Perhaps it's more like

a R

i

       b

          b

            o

          n

             s

            n

           a

e  k  

       twisted into a Celtic knot betwee

my breasts,    ornament

on my c     l l r.

             o       a

Of course, some see it

as a  rubber hose, counterfeit  Green Mamba

in the g r A S s

hooked to the spout and sHOVED into

c r  A  a  c K s,    FLUSHING  and

spurting,       but mostly

rolled up and locked in the shed

with     the other tools.

Really,     we all know it's only

        the CHESHIRE CAT

            vanished   into

         a bush,   except for

the smile.

Without Binoculars

Act 1

At six AM while I breast stroke, he

comes to the shore, slips something

through his zipper and strokes,

fantasizes licking my skin, my cunt

freshly sea, a fish returned home.

I decide on a gift: give my

undivided attention, admire his

mini-pier halting escape.  He tires

of approval, spurts into the sand.

Act 2

Eight PM, I am

shrill with wine, slink inside my red dress,

lament a lack of LUV to women I know.

They move off, and a Crested Cockatoo

man sidles in, tells my breasts, 'I've

been watching you.'  They react

against my intention, contract, conspire. I

elbow him to the tiles, hiss 'Arsehole!', but

want to sit across his pelvis.

Act 3

Twelve AM, another club, another man,

I watch as he stands on stage, a

familiar smoky perspective, this comedy

routine.  His Bikie hair, large bones

shifting uncertainly, eyes as he looks

down on me,    burn phosphorous

on my skin.  I go out into the wind.

Lightning cleaves the air, ozone.

Act 4

Two AM back at his place, he wakes

with an erection, blood on his

hands, broken glass on the carpet,

melted wax down the windowsill.

I sit barefoot on the fire escape

wrapped in his stained shirt. Thirty

feet below, the wet streets are blank.

Act 5

Four AM, he watches me from

the familiar perspective of his bed –

captive moon face looking back

through the window.   I know

this is what I intended – a two-

way view – but suck at my heart.

It's the only way to stop the flow.

Hara Kiri in the West

Every night, this sexual claustrophobia:

bean tendrils tied back;  resurrected Black Birds

baked in a pie.  He slips under her bed, listens to

the sucking sound of lovers, inches to a sheet

line, lips too dry to push farther.

Once his pointed fingertips, sanded for   touch

softer than a whisper pad, graze her toes as she

stands a moment on one foot.  Scarlet French

knickers   pooled around an ankle,    disappear from

the weekly wash – sacrifice to some lesser god.

Three days before the police find him,

he grasps her smoothly   sacrificial calf, strokes

as high as the thigh.  Opened like a mango

profound to the stone, he sucks her juices –

deeply cut rain, not vaginal but close enough.

His thoughts   telescope into a lipsticked slap

against a mirror.

Leather

Spiked collar, she chains him

to the wall, concrete scraping

the harness.   His skin quivers,

raw as a dog's dick, craves

the toe of her boot   ground

on his fingers – never enough to

fracture, but    enough

when the whip slashes

his juicy fruit

spurts    blood. He sniffs –

body decay, sweats

Furies.