I recall a taffy machine
Undulating pale yellow
Banana? Lemon Cream?
The flavor is immaterial
I remember delicate machinery
Armfuls of stretched sugar
Pressed from level to lever
Self pulled taffy
My motoral slowing
As I pass from lever to …
New Poetry
cerberus horse & six pack of turtles
cereberus horse
Death opens the box
fingers the cemetery
looks for the right shade
of lipstick
fingers the cemetery
looks for the right shade
of lipstick
to know
herself
is to survive
herself
herself
is to survive
herself
for now, she is
a more translatable version
of
before
a more translatable version
of
before
insanity is
alluring
the importance of trapdoors
alluring
the importance of trapdoors
Lessons in Chemistry
Fuck, I messed up—Dee licks the tip of her finger
and smears it across my eye. I smell her spit,
its lunchbox comfort. Blink of cinnamon gum
and ethanol. The room pumps warm-blooded
and smears it across my eye. I smell her spit,
its lunchbox comfort. Blink of cinnamon gum
and ethanol. The room pumps warm-blooded
with music, beats heavy against the
My Mother is Singing Her Seed Song & Genetic Erosion
My Mother is Singing Her Seed Song
over my brother’s body
buried with the row crops. Goodbye, little century,
little song cut through pain, a bird in the dark.
Too thin, I say to myself. Whose genes?
Too thin …
I Need to Have the Name for Everything
Madeline Allen is an MFA student at Florida State University. Her work has been featured in Poetry Online and The Shore, where her work was nominated for Best of the Net in 2024.…
A Small, Bounded Space & we were the last Americans
A Small, Bounded Space
she was right, and I pray I’ve learned the lesson
money comes and money goes
couldn’t tell you what the bill was, or where the money went,
but I think about those brown leather pumps once …
Dead by Magic
And in case they don’t work, says my landlord
about the peanut-butter baited no-kill traps
under the sink & beside the laundry, there’s always
the snap-traps, more humane than poison, no
suffering—there’s even a kind where you don’t see…
Gulf of
While you try to sing underwater, I make myself the unkeepable
promise: we will wake to the war’s end, knowing what happened.
You hold up your face, a plastic almost citizen. I run a lip of land
to be taken …
