Are the children opening mouths like hungry saxophones
Clamoring for bread from my bread music? Read More >

another’s dream

Read More >

Venezuelan-American writer Megin Jiménez wrote this poem “a few years ago when I was writing a series in the voice of cities. It’s Paris recounting a dream, a nightmare of a fire wakes it up, the rose window in Notre Dame like a big eye.” Read More >

Gemini’s ginned up as if for war—

all that’s missing is a bullet and a poet:
O America give back Jack Spicer!

She pulls her ponytail higher—
give back the unruptured discs of her back,
give back Jack’s liver, and deliver her

from this tired romanticism!
She’ll fight you all with one fist
and a black wolf. She’ll fight you

all in this melancholia of night.
She’ll correct your grammar. She’ll write
words even she can’t pronounce,

soak black cherries in gin,
feverish arm herself with armfuls
of airplanes and soldiers—again,

O Jack, where are you again
tonight?—she’ll soldier into the bright
October sky.

Jennifer Minniti- Shippey is the Managing Editor of Poetry International literary journal, Director of Poetic Youth programs, and a professor at San Diego State University. She is the author of Done Dating DJs, winner of the 2009 Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition, presented by the Munster Literature Centre; Earth’s Horses & Boys, from Finishing Line Press; and After the Tour, from Calypso Editions. Her writing has appeared in Salamander, Spillway, Cider Press Review, Tar River Poetry, and others. Keep up with her news at jennyminnitishippey.com

A Wall in Philadelphia

Yellow stenciled
digits slashed
red with spray
paint, an asemic
text November
sun comprehends
as the limit of
its reach. Deep
green weeds
glow in the rift
where asphalt
meets wall—
arched leaves
wide as any
tire in the lot
drip light, but
the lines lead
the eye:
white oval
remnant
of a name
beneath
a square
cement patch.
The poem, all
that wants
to be said,
is said—there. Read More >

COMEDY

We were still drifting as the day broke
improvising lines, like we practiced
machines in their tracks, mud
turned to cement, the feet
missed our gardens we
were coming and going
like it will matter, currents
through white sheep completely
alive, this was during the day—

it should be the truth. Naturally
in those lines this is a lie—

Uncertain—it heard us
never asking, how do you talk, even find
the words, from all the words
in your head, such a moment, liquid
of the ears, the blues
of the planet, two spoonfuls
absorb, in each head, a spiked drink, tongue
know the dropper, seem
surprised to drown the point.

Jared Schickling is the author of Needles of Itching Feathers, recently published with The Operating System. He has written several BlazeVOX books, including The Mercury Poem (2017) and Province of Numb Errs (2016), as well as The Paranoid Reader: Essays, 2006-2012 (Furniture Press, 2014); Prospectus for a Stage (LRL Textile Series, 2014); Donald Trump and the Pocket Oracle (Moria Books, 2017); and Donald Trump in North Korea (2017).  He edited A Lyrebird: Selected Poems of Michael Farrell (BlazeVOX, 2017) and he edits Delete Press and The Mute Canary, publishers of poetry. He lives in Lockport, NY.

“Henry at Henry” by Maria Garcia Teutsch

Henry Rollins has rocked my world for as long as I can remember. When I first heard him sing with Black Flag my body hummed for hours afterwards. Read More >

Ping-Pong Free Press’ 4th Annual Speech is Not Free gathering: Writers Against Fascism and for Freedom of the Press. Ping-Pong Free Press  and Poet Republik Ltd. gathered at the Howl! Happening Gallery in the Bowery to feature readings by writers who oppose fascism and dictatorships, and who are for freedom of the press and against totalitarian notions of state-sponsored propaganda. Read More >

Ping-Pong Free Press’ 4th Annual Speech is Not Free gathering: Writers Against Fascism and for Freedom of the Press. Ping-Pong Free Press and the Henry Miller Memorial Library are proud to feature readings by writers who oppose fascism and dictatorships, and who are for freedom of the press and against totalitarian notions of state-sponsored propaganda.

Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. will also feature readings from their newest releases:  Occasionally, I Remove your Brain Through Your Nose, by J. Hope Stein; Invitation to a Rescue, by Kate Lutzner; and Medeaum, by Jameson O’Hara Laurens, with presales of No Ledge Left to Love, by Dylan Krieger.

Readers include: Dylan Krieger, Brenda Coultas, Joanna Fuhrman, Christine Hamm, Kate Lutzner, Jameson O’Hara Laurens, Shelley Marlow, Eleni Sikelianos, Pamela Sneed, J. Hope Stein, and Maria Garcia Teutsch.

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project

6 East First Street (between Bowery & 2nd Avenue)

New York, NY 10003

(917) 475-1294

contact@howlarts.org

Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project blog here

Henry Miller Memorial Library Blog Here

It is fitting that Shelley Marlow should be the inaugural writer for Prose Republik for a number of reasons, a) she’s an outstanding writer, and, b) as we rapidly approach the twin specters of Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos, it is right and proper that this author is a witch. So here’s to all you seekers and wanderers in realms not within our philosophy. If you’d like to share a story, a poem, or a calavera here outside the bounds of this dream within a dream, please do, if not, please enjoy…

The Wind Blew Through Like a Chorus of Ghosts

by Shelley Marlow (new work in progress)

Read More >