Negative Compass

Bret Shepard
Direction is silence beyond the gated forest edging the field. We gate tonight. Then stop.                                                 Or silence the meadow. Then stop talking. Or unrest our legs and set ourselves                                                 a path along the creekbed. Then digest the matter of silence and the voles.
from the book Place Where Presence Was / Moon City Press

In our series Language as Form, we’ve invited poets to write about poetic language as patterned language—how words as sound, voice, sentence, and song become elements of form.

Ian U Lockaby on Edward Salem's "Fullness"
Photo: Ian U Lockaby
Cecilia Vicuña (translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky)
       Down with dresses!        up with plants!        Pollinated plants!
Bill King
I live dead center in the Tygart River Valley, which is expanding, now, with light.
Azad Ashim Sharma
I'm sick of fighting currents, toxic with our need of currency and our hope for revolution.
Joseph J. Capista

Off with your finger she says to no one, then lops off a tip, pinches its skin, and extracts with her teeth the olive pit, which she spits into another bowl. Three bowls, in all: one for what is hard, one for what is soft, one for what remains untouched.

Charlie Peck
It's the logic of applause              and food fights. I can't think about the bubonic      plague without getting anxious.

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