Art Beck’s “The Insistent Island” is an Odyssey-themed original poetry chapbook, first published by Paul Vangelisti’s Magra Books in 2019. Republished here with permission.
The Insistent Island
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witness to the non-arrival
By Stacey C. Johnson
some inherit land, and others silence.
I took in the riddle of loam—
where the unspoken ones are buried
After the Simulation Learns to Listen
By David Anson Lee
I have watched universes
fail their stress tests.
I have watched one succeed
by accident.
with history trapped inside us
By Stacey C. Johnson
The problem in the highway days was where to begin.
Even the lions we imagined becoming went lame.
Our backs bent early, sights set on oblivion.
New in Town
By Alex Dodt
We descended on rented birds of fire, runted gods
porting power cords and lording neck pillows.
We pulled the chute and touched down
Missiles Like Low Ceilings
By Will Falk
Missiles like low ceilings, helmet-to-helmet contact,
or a ski accident. You don’t remember snow but you do
Abduction III
By Jo Ann Clark
My kundali—my Hindu astrology chart—says I must not keep a weapon at home. That’s not even a thing in kundalis. I googled it, checked my sister’s too.
past is a flame
By Karen Earle
“bird-boned singer I / smoke-and-mirror you / minor-keyed to confusion / hovering”
Crow dreams an eerie peacefulness laced with fear
By Peter Grandbois
“And wakes, trembling at the emptiness of it, the vast cavities / And begs God to squeeze him, to crush out the air of protest”
Crow calls from the top of a pine
By Peter Grandbois
“With a voice made of rain drawn from the deep / grey of another Ohio winter.”
Blueberries
By Edward Manzi
“Excuse my ambition, it’s lacking.
I’m not even here. Isn’t that enough?”
Let’s Sit on the Bench and Chat
By Tatyana Bek
Translated by Bita Takrimi
“Let’s sit on the bench and chat a bit,
Smile, and let our heads nod like birds.
‘I don’t think you should cry,’You’ll say,
‘Or let the cold numb your heart.'”
The maintenance manager
By DS Maolalai
“the burn and the tan, the bruise
and the beautiful tuesdays outside. circling
housing estates, like a dog taming tick-
bitten sheep. I’m driving—it’s boiling,”
People in free situations.
By DS Maolalai
“look: we’re pushing
out onward –
fast over motorways
like opening a book”
Ode to Sending Light
By Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad
“It’s the impossibility of the well
wish that gives me pause
like, how do you even send light,
loop ribbons around shapeless glow”
Report to Marianne
By Mark J. Mitchell
“The news is bad—when angels left
they blocked them all by dropping wings.
Some have looked for old paths around.
No one’s seen them since. There’s a song”
Mooring
By Kirsten Kaschock
“You are living and I keep you in one still piece alive.
On the ice, everything held quiet, and after—
marks from knives we wore on our feet.”
Last Week The Sun Died
By Joanna Theiss
And Jenny can’t stop talking about it.
She tells me Lake Baikal
has frozen in July, and
uncountable hectares of soybeans have withered,
and the doomsday clock is set to twenty days.
Untitled (Phrenology Box)
By Kirsten Kaschock
Maybe even the galaxy is holistic.
Then there’s the split between
beauty and reality. There’s the fault line
dividing them and threads that traverse it.
Damn!
By Steve Castro
A man climbing up a steep mountain wielding a Claymore with a wild boar as a guard dog would not be considered strange during an apocalypse.
Pishtaco
By Linda Wojtowick
At Sunday barbecue she sees him he fetching chairs
for the pastel dames in the shade. What a saint, she thinks.
He’s always been a baby-kisser. Shorthand for glazed.
Basket Filler
By Linda Wojtowick
It’s like when someone fills a basket. It looks
good. It looks like the right thing. But that’s
how it happens. You won’t know the road.
Sometimes the largest fillers are the emptiest men.
Rubric
By Linda Wojtowick
It’s an old story: everything was coming new. Layers on layers of new. New neighborhoods gridding out like dead stars. At new airports tequila was green, snacks vacuum-packed.
from: The Oyster
By Ann Pedone
The day after Heinrich Scheimann discovered the ancient city of Troy, all the she-goats came down from the mountain and stated quite matter-of-factly that they refused to ever be inseminated again.
some gifted
By Gerónimo Sarmiento Cruz
the month of april
in excess of march
obstinate as a foreign language
seemingly garrulous but suave
happy
William Aarnes
“Having to talk doesn’t make her happy.
She feels put on the spot, doesn’t like
the pitch of her voice, can’t ignore the way
her left hand waves about unless she focuses”
i really love the little things that go unnoticed
Philip Jason
“The first thing I want you to know is that I love
the circle you drew in the sand
with your finger. It has one
too many corners, but it is a thing of you”
College
Jeffrey Kingman
“On Mt. Kilimanjaro
we sat, our first date.
The cat took a bath.
We licked each other’s”
The Desert Inn
Betsy Martin
“the walls
are heat
and bird calls”
I am writing the dream
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
Translated by Domnica Radulescu
“I am printing on paper in golden letters
the flights
the passing of hours
the growing grass and the secret”