La Piccioletta Barca

Poetry

Edited by: Ignacio Oliden

Brutalism

Two little pigs went to market. The better-looking one got slaughtered, the less desirable one went home. Ironic, of ...

Sao Paulo, 6th January, indefinitive year

Davide Deleonardis

The essence of things mingles with the ground, smearing itself on the walls, on the windows of buildings ...

ROOM 237

Kathleen Hellen

Your mother is a bathtub cigarette. Your father’s hopping to the bells of lurid sex...

The Potential For Every Thing In Any Thing

Josh Bettinger

It does not sound like my house is on fire but fire burns elsewhere undisturbed by my considerations...

In Morris Park

Ann de Forest

where the grid swerves off course and the numbered sequence of streets stops making sense ...

Thing collection observation

Felix Torres

The vase we bought second hand Pearl flowers mother over it I pinch an anther and take pleasure ...

To the Silence of a Continuous Thing

Isabel Hoin

The snow in the north falls, and melts, without the help of Niobe’s tears. She, too, lost her children—her ...

Three Poems

Sophia Rollins

Step 1: Locate the edges of yourself. Run your hands along the hem of your body. You might find loose threads,...

Tokyo

Damon Moore

Ideally the best form of criticism is without being noticed but he's sighing,

Gardener's Lament: Spring Planting & Spoiled Patch

Ravi Shankar

seed stem tulip soaking sun soaking rain showers

AMBIGUOUS POEM by you slash me

Calum Blackie

It is day. One of the seasons somewhere in the ambiguous middle....

A Black Dress Moves in a Blue Movie

Doris Morrison

In darkness we fall among shadows we crawl in between lights and the senses...

from: Jon Day

Ann Pedone

I wander lymphic. Foreclosed of all intercourse. Without any in-grown to speak of.

Bukowski Birthday Poem

Leanne Grabel

Charles Bukowski died on March 9, 1994. I was chopping potatoes at my cafe when I heard. It was 5:41 in the morning...

Rock of Juno

P. Q. R. Anderson

The piazza by night, spotlights on S. Nicolo di Bari, braziers, a football chased through the village by its ...

retrograde, hippocampus, and the spin

Alani Hicks-Bartlett

declining BROTHER, declining MIRROR IMAGE, declining TWIN, cleaved soul, cleaved shell

Nothing Left & Working it Out

Christopher Buckley

It doesn’t matter anymore that each time I step out...

Pearls

Irina Hrinoschi

In the row of red-faced babies without I.D. tags, her mother...

Deep Hours

Agata Maslowska

mother and I crawl through the forest shapes of children’s voices in a burning school, soft moss

Swedish pronunciation: lesson 1

Rebecca Zätterström

Think of the word ‘love’ as pronounced in a soppy movie-scene. Replace the ‘l’ at the start with an ‘s’.

Wax wings

Maia Brown-Jackson

I am a tub of gunpowder doused in gasoline flaming alight, raging high, ( b u r n i n g o u t )...

Worm Hook

Tompkins Wald

Was I feeding the worm to the hook or the hook to the worm when at my father’s guidance I pressed the barb...

Microcosmos

Luke Shuffield

Upon my naked knee rests a curious little creature pastel green unnumbered legs...

Current

John Hamel

In sight ahead, the sun and tide go down; retrospect, they rise. Did Phaeton crash into the earth? Somehow carried...

How To Be a Non-Player Character

Susan Niz

A water-stained binder full of recipes in a bin at Goodwill. A bin that is shovel shaped, like a scoop, like a grave...

gardening with celebrity obituaries after late-season heatwave

Chelsea Querner

everbearing fruit is accidental - - a tart companion to celebrity obituaries - - i use for distraction - - ...

The Orphans

Paul Jaskunas

This morning air, not as it seems, elsewhere churning, a false tranquility ...

Not Just Another Hospital Poem

Sophia Falco

A dot a swirl a drop a splash on Vincent van Gogh’s painting palette dish ...

The Romance of Plant Life

Hannah Weber

They tell me few sights are as welcome as the milk sweet carpet of early snowdrops on the lawns of the Regency ...

The Hydrologic Cycle

Ingrid Jacobsen

‍it’s hot and water works the job. there are carrots and there are grapes. a blue tarp hangs ...

Haibun: The Peonies of Chang’an

Leanne Ogasawara

The daimyo, who ruled over clouds and gods, was said to possess one-seventh of all the gratest teabowls...

Uncle’s Birthday of Hummingbirds

Ewen Glass

Liver-breached words: ‘it’s just my truth what can you say to that? What manner of hummingbird are you that you can't...

Crow No.11

Mitch Corber

Invariably in transit, we persist to spray our personal pollen. A chew of a candy kiss, the chatter of observant...

Two poems

Lola Masip

Where are the unwriting writers? Maybe wetness numbles them...

Poems by Meredith Chester

Meredith Chester

Fireflies glow in cadence, floating softly, suspended abovethe yearly arrival of the blue angel hostas ...

El Cenote

Leanne Tory-Murphy

you can see the bottom but it’s hard to tell where iti s our feet can’t reach limestone crumbles

Arse Poetica

A. Z. Foreman

Poems cannot be. Not unless they mean something. No sun of night can be a star without the humans out

The Only Originality

Taylor Napolsky

Isn’t it what’s after—a space opens up, disappears, comes back, moves away again, based on ...

nineteen/twenty-four

Julianna Salinas

a tropical paradise stares tauntingly back at her though the corners have begun to peel back, exposing the facade ...

If time is a measure for all human experience

Sarah Wetzel

Then it’s also the pond we know we must dredge—the frogs asleep in its center, a ...

God of the gaps

Steven Churchill

When you see a ______, you want to fill it in, finish the thought, answer the question...

Where I'm Tired Of Shooing Flies

Khashayar Mohammadi

I’m drowning on the second floor of the Ocean wondering... Did she fall? or did the sky just...

my tongue would split were it not for the roses

Simon Maddrell

the oldest charm is springing pinks like poppers its bedfellows tangling their way through alliums ...

A poem

Flavio Ferraro

The immensity, of course, the enchanted wonder that repeats...

Pacific Coast High

Arlene Tribbia

conjures an ocean of thoughts in my right hemisphere some white lines blur orange turning omniscient...

The Poetic Flowers, at the Botanical Gardens

Kollin Kennedy

As the cluster-flowered Iceberg Floribunda roses, with a yellow eye unjaundiced...

a ~ bstinentiå°

Tatiana Krasilnikova

A paper cup: coffee stains, your DNA, words ...

Thursday at temple

Jael Montellano

Outside cottoning with rain but I am ill with you, steeping softly like hόng chá...

Calendared intention

Shoba Narayan

My mother calls me every morning and recites the / panchangam = the Hindu calendar, beginning

nDada Poem

Whiskey Radish

The poem is about poppy pain / The class all loves it / dreaming about dying thin / beautiful ...

Tuning Fork

Sophie Sardari

I am of the piezoelectric opinion we let the twin flame burn ...

First Snow

Olivia Weiss

It’s snowing / Just enough that when the train stops you can see it ...

A secret, whispered.

William Clickard

This one’s between you and me: There’s a little speckled pebble that I bury...

not your welch's grape juice

Mads Nguyen

please / please / please / please / please / pour me / another glass ...

Cry Me A River

Kapil Kachru

Cry me a river, don’t flood my mind / Let’s marvel at the many / We always leave behind / Swallowing up the sidewalk ...

Diogenes Haiku

Jones Irwin

The dog barks / At anyone human / Stupid enough

as the evening sun goes down

Konstantin Rega

then comes that strain / in my left breast / like a hair tugged out a scalp // like a finger moving ...

Cakewalk

Michael Chang

the moneychanger / chased out of temple / the teary-eyed voter / offering her two cents / loser graphic designer...

Who Mourns the Fragments?

Vincent Casaregola

Mostly at the edge, on shoulder / or median, I see them through / peripheral vision, unless on a curve...

Charlotte Corday

Natalie Mariko

who believes my shoulders / can be held // —or a woman is encoded & then memorised? / no player saves...

Midsummer in Ballywalter

Yessica Klein

Carl lets himself in. One lobster pot has a hole, the otherholds a brown crab, toes robotic & menacing ...

buckle up you're important

Celia Easton Koehler

and if you had put your arms around your mother, / what do you think would have happened ...

Rip Current

Camille McCarthy

At dusk my bare feet stray / towards flat, welcoming waves, / continuous carpets unfolding / in the purple light ...

The Undefeated Champion of Sorrow

Sarah Bennett

When I open your letter, there is your body. The new fabric of you is worn like a laurel around old flesh ...

Ben Lerner and Maryam Hessavi and Fiona Banner and Ernest Hemingway and me and the border

Simeon Pereira-Madder

Fiona Banner gave me a book of poetry not poetry in fact but about it and about in fact the hatred ...

Your Aura

Heikki Huotari

In the beginning the tomato is a vegetable disguised as fruit, there is more to the dragonfly than to the shadow of ...

Poems on the Underground

Emma Haworth

Men’s armpits, / snotty toddlers with kites, / cyclist and his bike ...

Offcuts

Daniel Crilly

First off, / Being so low, but lower still on coin, we had to strike a deal; / I, a woodworker, bring...

Girls Looking Nowhere

Kira Rosemarie

There’s an art to looking into the middle distance that all girls seem to understand how to express ...

White Sun & Levant

Deborah Kelly

but here in snow / a deer with agate eyes / holds / still / ...

Put Gunch

Veronica Schorr

Yosing lou was a put gunch, a tick in the keeth, the strast law—...

Lemon / Ice / Mosquito / King Cake

Kelly Jones

We drip a spaghetti trickle from the tap and hope the hard freeze doesn’t bust the pipes. Trees drop their lemons...

Front Porch Morning In Which Wind Chimes Portend Newborns

Leia K. Bradley

Shhh, not now my love, I am dissociating to Patsy Cline. Fine. There are things...

Dérive

Alex Priestley

What do I owe? The question takes the opposite shape of the most significant parts of our lives...

Soot

Gail Schulte

Self-neglect. It claims my skin, hair . . . and now, my teeth.

november broke into my room, tore me apart, and lazily put me back.

Hannah Dettmann

november tastes of burnt coffee, a piercing cadet-blue loneliness. swelling in the chest from a salt-soaked...

Oczyścić

Thomas Sadoski

These damned rivers never learn: I’m here to be washed clean...

SHORTLIST: Courtroom In 53 Reds by Marina Scott

Marina Scott

red flags all over the place, red carpets, behind the fame ...

SHORTLIST: L'Eau and Behold by Jill Pearlman

Jill Pearlman

Paris. A skip and a jump to unwind. To “decontracter.”...

SHORTLIST: humming by Leone Gabrielle

Leone Gabrielle

du du doo hunger is my pillow i never really thought that maybe i am the pillow...

SHORTLIST: The Hyperbolic Metro by Efren Cruzada

Efren Cruzada

In a Station of the Hyperbolic Metro (Smells and sights blur into pink lights and cigarettes/ ...

SHORTLIST: Rainbow by Neal Mason

Neal Mason

Have you ever seen a more electric blue? ...

The Dead & Lund

Alexandra Fössinger

How desperately / these seagulls imitate roosters / in a city where all the puddles / try to resemble lakes

A Toucan’s Scientific Name

Sarah Dunphy Lelii

is fabulous, RAMPHASTOS TOCO: made for the mascot of a cruise ship salsa band. Fast-o Toco they’d call him, Fast ...

I Have a Forest in My Head

Victoria Dym

I have a forest in my head / where I can bathe / (Japanese Forest Bathing is a thing) ...

War. Day 339

Olga Livshin

Power stations have been bombed. Tomorrow is your birthday, you promised your family a cake.

30,000 officially dead, January 2024

James Caton

What to do with this information? Where to keep it safely hogtied? ...

Chez Jean-Paul: A Three-Star Michelin Journal of Poetry & Pâté Can Suck It

Bob King

First, from the elegant Online Exclusives menu, gimme a twist-cap-to-go bottle of...

Heights of Yangmingshan

Efren Laya Cruzada

Whistling thrushes and blue magpies overlooked hilly grasslands...

SECOND RUNNER-UP: Act 10. every night must end; or, an act of morning (an excerpt)

Stephen R. Minnich

stagedark. a pause before curtain and lights. somewhere behind the curtain : curtains...

The Persistence of Vision, II

Christine E. Hamm

the screen with all these ghosts ...

Wyomings

Ken Taylor

old grandad reversed on the window by bottle shine calls me into the bar...

Character

James Spencer

Your eye / binds you seriatim, / be you saditty or simple: / tears Mistress Aural from...

Marginal

Ellen Sander

The difference between sigh and breath / politician and dustpan — / that is the work of muralists...

Undone

Erin Castaldi

His fork vibrates when he eats...

Specially Woven Edge that Prevents Cloth from Unravelling

Lawrence Bridges

In the wind machine, at the ranch / in the bristle cone canyon that blows day after day / I’m halfway from where I ...

This Practice

Kaylee Schofield

Between the still, slow strokes of the drawknife / there is no room for thought at all...

Silver of Soap

Wendy Blaxland

In the soap dish of our shower / lies a plump bar of fresh soap

S'our Apples

Benjamin K. Herrington

dawn woke you / gently / those red fingers rose

Writing searches for a homeland. Behind a poem or a story is a landscape, or several if there is a journey. The setting may be in a wild, remote place. Or it may be in a city.. Or it may be an imagined place, like Xanadu.

Meditations From A Restless Night

Stephen R. Minnich

For a restless soul, the night is an endless possibility. A stage upon which experience and imagination collide. How different would be the day if just one thing only changed? If everything changed but only just? Countless are the variations that one might imagine. These poems welcome what arrives when rest is unwelcome and restlessness embraced; when one learns, perhaps, to stand on stage between the infinite collisions, letting each one try itself out.

Ambivalence

Micaela Brinsley

Somewhere in between knowing, ambivalence is a feeling that never quite acts like one. It’s more of a filter, that blurs reality until the moment it snaps, cracks under its own ephemerality. Here you’ll find a drive between prose and poetry, effort and surrender, loss and its clarity.

Out of the Woods

Geoffrey Heptonstall

Civilisation and Nature often have a difficult relationship. Writing about Nature seeks harmony between town and country.

Follies

Ian Fisher

These three linked short stories anecdote the cosmopolitan fictional Fielder family: Ira, wife Nessa, and son Rónán, from the mid-eighties—which Rónán likes to call B.R.—to summer 2021.

Seoul Metal

Michael Howarth

'Seoul Metal' explores the Mullae Dong district with a series of ten photographs. Visit this neighbourhood in Seoul, with an eclectic mix of metal workshops, artists’ studios, bars and restaurants. Join this loud, boisterous and very industrial trip with Michael Howarth.

All That Glitters is Not Gold

Yvonne Jowell

"All that glitters is not gold” is a three-piece story that examines a woman’s abortion from three overlapping angles. "The danger of the child in your head", “Mozart assassinated” and “Playing your cards right” each explore the pains of an abortion, crumbling relationships and the pursuit of hope.

L'Escargot

Geoffrey Heptonstall

Geoffrey Heptonstall returns in the Thread with a collection of essays inspired by Henri Matisse’s L’Escargot. Go down into the labyrinth. You will find a discussion about art, darkness, tragedy and memory with Francois Gilot, Jean-Paul Sartre, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jean Cocteau, Horace and Aristotle amongst many other guests.

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage)

Joe Wagner

Come Here, Chodż Tutaj (or, A Tribute to Mother Courage) is a three-part essay that revolves around the author’s experience in Warsaw in 1980 and 1981 as a twelve-year-old boy, as well as the life of Anna Walentynowicz, the Polish activist who inspired Solidarity. It explores notions of memory, language, history, and labor unions with several literary references along the way.

Way Out in the Old West

Sam Price

Stories of the American West have largely been relegated to the past. Reading about gratuitous, racially-charged violence in a world brimming with gratuitous, racially-charged violence -- most readers are wise to pass. Yet, something gleams in those far-off hills, gems like True Grit, Warlock, and Lonesome Dove. These genre classics remind modern readers the stories we construct about our own pasts are, like the legends of old, more mythology than history.

Digital Truth Serum

Mulan Fu

How does the virtual world control how we perceive ourselves and can animation help us identify how we unknowingly subject ourselves to its terms? Constructed in relation with artist Mulan Fu's visual language of abstraction, this is a record of the development of a work of animation from conception to production. A simulation.

700th Anniversary of the Death of Dante

Antonio Melloni

Seven hundred years ago, Dante Alighieri died in Ravena. Broadly read and criticized, his Comedy has been – and still is – a sea in which many have ventured to find poetry, philosophy, history and religion. Some, moved by the Italian, attempted their own creations inspired by such waters. Here, two essays and a poem intend to be, if nothing else, a compass for an eventual reader to find his way towards Dante´s work.

Animal v. Human

Luke Davies

Two miniature collections of short stories and a short essay on the theme of animals and humans, written by a human.

Dream Journey

Geoffrey Heptonstall

Dream Journey is an account of the images that a mind encounters on first waking. It begins with a city walk at night. Before nightfall, there is a strange feeling that the world is neither light nor dark. The noise of the day gives way not to silence, but to the sounds of the night. In the early morning at first light it may seem that the stones come alive. They may appear to move or to speak. Of course it is only the mist of a grey dawn.

Dostoevsky is 200

Jakob Brønnum

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, turns 200 on November 11th. "Dostoevsky is 200” is a quartet of short essays that explores the writer’s understanding of the problems of Russian society and his characterization of human nature. His vision of the human person is so strong and pure that there is much to be learned from reading him.

Through the Lens

Nacho Oliden

Through the Lens offers a reflection on photography, memory and identity through essays and poetry. You can expect to encounter Bioy Casares, Manoel de Oliveira, Joaquín Sorolla, Nacho’s friend Simón, as well as others along the way.

In Constant Motion

Geoffrey Heptonstall

This collection of essays investigates the poetic form, the life of poets, familiar streets and places of learning. A journey within the mind, with language and within the world at a moment of transformation. You can expect to meet T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sally Purcell, John Wain, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop and Amanda Gorman along the way...

On History

Dylan Howarth

‘On History’ comprises three critical reflections on the depiction of historical events in cinema, on the role of the historian in the study of history, and on the historical depiction of madness in American literature. Through this collection of essays, join a voyage through history, from the late Stalin and Khrushchev eras, to ‘Hitler’s War,’ and 19th and 20th century America.

Dreamland

Michael Shapland

December 2030. Tom is a young man intent on saving his older brother, who resides in ‘Dreamland’. Dreamland is a drug house for the rich, hidden underneath Soho Square. No man has ever left Dreamland.

The Muses of October

Michael A. Dann

This collection of essays offers a reflection on the decay of empires. From Ancient Greece, to the Roman Empire, to the Aztecs, the story of the fall of ancient civilisations in 'The Muses of October’ provides some insight into contemporary political developments.

Lockdown Meanderings

Eleonora Narbone

'Lockdown Meanderings' offers a critical reflection on some of the effects of the pandemic. This collection of essays and short stories explores the passing of time, the subtle beauty of routines, the importance of storytelling, and the immense joy of seeing people again after lockdown. From Boccacio’s Decameron, to running in Ancona, to the beauty of moka coffee, enjoy a virtual trip to the heart of Italy.

Singing Cicadas

Chariklia Martalas

According to Socrates in the Phaedrus, when the Muses were born, song was birthed with them. Some people became so intoxicated with singing that they forgot to eat and drink and so they died. These humans became the Singing Cicadas who sang until they died and then reported to the Muses which humans have honoured them. Chariklia openly admits that she wants the Cicadas to report to the Muses that she has honoured them, so she can give these pieces of writing as offerings.

The First Words

Geoffrey Heptonstall

"When the first words were written it became possible…" This trilogy explores the role of writers and literature, as well as the art of writing; these notebooks filled with possibilities, improbabilities and nonsense. A true manifesto that explains why it matters very much how you say what you say, why nobody can tell you how to write and why the true self is the imaged self.

A Chapter in the Book of Existence

Colby Torbett

This collection of essays offers a reflection of life’s place in space and time through the physical environment of three different settings: Space, the arctic, and the jungle. A Chapter in the Book of Existence seek to express the beautiful, finite nature of our planet as it exists in the universe through the lenses of science, human nature, and exploration.

Celebrating Beethoven

Jakob Brønnum

Beethoven was born 250 years ago in December. We do not know his exact birthday, but records show that he was baptized in Bonn on the 17th. 2020 should be a celebration of his intense artistic and unswervingly humanistic musical legacy. “Celebrating Beethoven” looks at four large and well-known works, attempting to identify some ways Beethoven widens his time and his métier into matters relevant to philosophy, romantic spirituality, abstract art and the dawning of modern, personal identity.

On Voices

Myko Philip

Join the odyssey through the voices that one hears while deciphering Eliot’s The Waste Land. Are you hearing the voices? What happens when you don’t quite hear the voices that Eliot wants you to hear? What happens when you do begin to hear the voices? What happens when you mistakenly hear the other voices?

Some Notes from Chile

Joe Wagner

A trip to Chile, exploring its history and present, from Pinochet and the Chicago Boys to O-18 and Covid-19. Notes on political unrest, streets coming to life and creating a new social pact. Interventions by Neruda and references to Bolaño may shine light on the rebellion, or simply provide solace.

In Search of Lost Words

Zoe Fairtlough

A reflection on family legacies and the search for purpose, threaded through with the origins of Italian gelato and the etymology of related words.

On Poetic Creation

Nacho Oliden

Embarking on a journey into the past – from ancient Greece, across the Seine and the Sistine Chapel, to Hollywood and America – this is an exploration of the intricacies of the poetic process, the interaction of poetry with history and philosophy and the uniqueness of different art forms.

On Loss and Solitude

Pamela Mandell

Ruminations on the natural cycles of life and death inspired by the bildungsroman of a life companion. The Noki Trilogy, named after the author’s canine companion, builds on casual conversations in the form of three short stories, stimulating all five senses, and exploring the depth and clarity of the perception of loss.

On Writers and Writing

Geoffrey Heptonstall

An investigation of the writer’s challenges in accepting reality, the inevitability of change in order to discover the truth and the life of words independent from their writer. This ensemble of short essays proposes a journey across Santiago de Cuba, San Francisco, Cape Ann, Cambridge and Avignon through diary entries.

On Philosophical Thought

Facundo Rodriguez

An exploration of the abstraction of modern thought and its interaction with shared practice. Featuring Boethius, Ortega y Gasset, Marx, Kant and many more, this series of pieces employs both prose and verse to explore the depths of human nature, and the existential impact of creation.

On Love and Memory

Sonya Wohletz

Some thoughts on modern aesthetics and the realm of the affective. From Otto Dix, to a tale of Gustav Mahler and Gustav Klimt, this four-part historical account cum contemporary journey, spells out the intricacies of love, memory and ritual grief.

On The Self and The Other

Daniel Olivieri

An anatomy of human connections, their joys and disappointments. A compilation of short stories which investigate the value of conversations in the dark, the disappointments of author pictures, the pleasures of TSA inspection, and provide tips on how to avoid the cold desperation of being lonely, while steering clear from the prickly pain of being with other people.

On Poetic Truth

Myko Philip

An exploration of the intricacies of a poetic life, including the experience the artfulness of objects and the desire to shake off automated routines. This collection of essays sheds light on how one’s literary inclinations can guide attention, perception and actions, explains why some words stick, and, satisfies the reader’s pursuit of revelations, settling for a moment of modest epiphany.

On The Five Elements

Joude Bazzoun

Contemplations on mother nature and the elements. These three short personifications of nature as a creative and controlling force affecting humans, explore the motherly qualities of the sea, the wind and the rain. Paintings by the artist accompany the texts and offer a visual voyage from the comfort of your home.

On Self-Improvement

Eponine Howarth

A series exploring loss, memory, romantic relationships and purposive reading. A mix of essays, short stories and a list of gardening tips for beginners. Learn how to become Umberto Eco’s Model Reader, how to save words and about the art of tweaking neurones.