The American Poetry Review

To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:against the grid of the quilt, her hand seemsstitched to the cuff of its sleeve—although he wantsmost urgently the hand to stroke his head,a

How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

Chance darkened me as a morning darkens,preparing to rain. It goes against its arc,betrays its clock-hands. The day was a dark-eyed giraffe,its unfathomable legskept walking. A person is not a day,not rain,no gentle eater of high leaves. I did not ke

by Jami Macarty “In these quiet, careful, though searing and poignant poems, Jami Macarty turns her considerable powers toward the dissolution of a romantic relationship in a desert landscape that is at once sustaining and doomed. Here, a body is at

To begin with a definition: A poem is a text structurally constrained by the repetition of any language element(s). The continuum of poetic constraint is extensive, stretching from operations that a reader will find completely imperceptible to overwh

Number two from the right was an angry drunk.Number one from the left always held the face of a dead cousin in her left pocket.The third woman placed fourth in a seed spitting contest at age six.The first one knew she was the prettiest.The fifth didn

Pallets of bottled water on the back porchwere one evidence of apocalypseor the demise of the way of thingsor lazily written computer code backin the 80s, when I was a boyand the nightly news was just about all the doomwe had stomachs for, whenwere t

My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

Because I was too mean to make him a brother,my son has had to learn of hate alone.I told my friend I’d only ever wantedone child for reasons to do with the shapeof an arrow. But in truth I’m so disgustedby what I know of brothers, having given birth

Saint Agatha holds her breaststwo jiggly vanilla pudding cupswith red berry nipples ploppedupon a silver platter. What I can’t see is the blood, the knife marks. This gory waitressing,her task for not consentingto open for Quintianus. Oh purr yeshe b

Dear Reader, We’re so grateful for the support that our readership has shown the magazine and all the poets we publish. We hope you will join us, now in our 48th year, to keep The American Poetry Review going strong. In 2019, we published six outstan

Arriving early at the limit of understanding,I managed to find a good seat—“The Day of the Sun”in The Long Meadow (Vijay Seshadri) When asked in an interview about humor in his work, Seshadri acknowledges that satire is an element in his poetry, alth

Of time evaporating, of my mother’s fingerrunning down my nose during the uncordingceremony, after she died, the vast sky,the Milky Way neighborhood,and me, and David, and the black cat growing tumors,rain falling, drops left over, puddles gathering,

Your daughter returns to youwith three new freckles,the purple stainof a popsicle on her tongue.She gives nothing but what you gleanfrom slimmed features,sneakers gone old, the black holeof a backpack she shrugsoff her shouldersto race, unencumbered,

In the classroom students are imagining screensthat feel like silk, like silt, fiery as kilns, off kilter.They discuss a future with stone walls that dissolveinto fog and reconstitute as universal organs, pulsing,a future with robot spouses who know

In class, I stared because of the blood going blue.The chalk that coated our fingerly teeth.The way we lapped each other (on the shorewhere the flowering). I gave away our location. Smacked my lips in the coat closet.Sucked at her teeth. We, on all e