Outside,The sun has set,The atmosphere is freezingTo the surface for the night,While mining rovers trundleHome through frostedRegolith. Inside,The air ducts hum,Recycled water flows throughHydroponic gardens under lights.A systems check confirms thatAll is well insideThe airlock. Elsewhere,On Planet Earth,It’s said they walk on grass,Enjoying sunshine as their right. She sighs, andContinue Reading

I’m here to fetch things that float up,Devoted to the murk of ocean, No hint whatever it isA few feet below, Where iridescence wavesBefore vanishing. I come to this dockEach morning And imagineA flounder, the wise seer, Gazing from his abyssThrough tricks of light At the stranger craning his neckInContinue Reading

Carolyn Adams’ poetry and art have appeared in Steam Ticket, Cimarron Review, Evening Street Review, Dissident Voice, and Blueline Magazine, among others. Having authored four chapbooks, her full-length volume is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. She has been twice nominated for both Best of the Net and a Pushcart prize. SheContinue Reading

Inspired by “The Cape.” In the wind of the beach, I climbed into the gorilla.  Its skin hung down like an immense human cape.                –Ben Crowley The Ape  My father always knocked on my door. ‘Perchance, the ape is in?’ He opened my door and helped me into theContinue Reading

the symphony of bugs buzzing around our brightbodies. the spray acrid as gasoline over our arms,legs, torsos, faces scrunched like zipper spokes. the wind hesitating before reaching to touchthe leaves, our hair sticky with sweat beinglifted briefly before settling again. a reflection telescope takes time to temperature adjust.nothing to doContinue Reading

As a child, my favorite summertime souvenir wasNot seashells or sand crabs butThe tar that stuck to my salty feetLike a sailor’s tattoosAnd I’d dance upon the web-like shadow ofThe water treatment plantThat I mistook as part of the refineryIn hopes of staining myself permanently My efforts were no matchContinue Reading

Mostly land and wind here.Barns, silos, woodframe housesfloat on a sea of plowed fields.It’s the last of winter,not quite spring. A storm’s blown in tonight,gusts slashing the house, crashingthe dead aspen onto the dairy shed roof.Thunder rattles the loose sashin the kitchen window.Lightning rips tears in the black sky-plain above.OutContinue Reading

a found poem, after Giannina Braschi Madmen fear no moon, fear no fire. Burns of flesh are poetry. Madmen’s wounds are poetry. Salt is for fish, salt is for death, the poem is not among the dead. Remember, but don’t write it. sleepwalker among cats, thief among dogs, man amongContinue Reading

Who are these determined apes, who endurethe cries of cracked bones and vertigo,which precede the treetops?Treetops where these apes reach and graspand check their fingertips to see if maybethey’d grazed the halo.They don’t yet realize, yet still they reach—unapologetically— up toward the twinkle which precedes the dawn “Daniel J. Nickolas”Continue Reading

We should fear the ocean. Something we know without being told. Enter extremity: A shifting massEasily knocking us to the sandWith such obviousUnrestrainablePower. I almost died in the ocean once But breath broke through The suffering void And aspiring skin Touched the shore again. Since that haunted eveningThe sea andContinue Reading