Category: WTP spotlight: poetry

Lost Photograph From WTP Vol. VII #7 I wish I knew what happened to the photograph of my father and me that my younger brother took when we were in our twenties, maybe still in college, home for Thanksgiving. We were helping our father cut firewood, a ritual since we were boys, though back then…

The Sleeper Agent From WTP Vol. VII #6 You have been placed by birth in a strange country, among strange people, where you are intended to play a crucial role though no one yet knows what that will be. Keep in mind the name you’ve been given is an alias. Grow up, learn the local…

“It’s When” From WTP Vol. VII #6 It’s when you widen your lips that the air hasn’t the strength to say it has nothing left only the word for cars moving slowly one behind the other —it’s useless —it’s also November and she is dead and the rain smells from the word that let the…

From WTP Vol. VII #5 Sometimes By Jacquelyn Shah                           it doesn’t matter if morning, its course having overtaken the tacking darkness, is lightened suddenly by something small and graceful, a lagniappe in an overgrown lawn—herbertia. It doesn’t matter, the pleasure of espial,…

From WTP Vol. VII #4 I Wonder By Michael Hettich how to respond when the checkout woman tells me her son has been sick since he ate the crackers I’m buying, holds the box up and scowls, claiming his grades have slipped too and he’s started to listen to ugly music, you know? And I…

From WTP Vol. VII #3 Turritopsis dohrnii By Rebecca Olander In a tenth-floor hospital room, my father survives surgery with scars, the tang of residual fear, and green Jell-O. The besieged brain chugs along, the scalp peeled open, shunt placed, cancer given marching orders to the abdomen. His wife leans in, and he thinks she…

From WTP Vol. VII #2 Buddhas on Death Row By Lauren Scharhag Over and over, he draws that visage, slender, beatific, possessed of the earlobes of wisdom. The desire to create cannot go unheeded. Sometimes, the third eye is a jewel, sometimes, a wound. Hands stained with ink, watercolor, crayon, glue. We’ll call it extreme…

From WTP Vol. VI #9 Anna Alcott at Fruitlands Fruitlands. Harvard, MA. 1843. My notebook is heavy with sky. Red little leaves crumple between my toes, I place them between brown pages pacing out the afternoon. No picnic. No beasts of burden. No beasts at all. The list of NOs sweats off the pages. No…

From WTP Vol. VI #8 Triangulation By Bob Meszaros Here, where the ice withdrew and the rock spine rose then slowly buckled over time, while the seashells rattle and the white surf beats old boulders into silt, gently, with his fingertips, he traces and retraces letters, numbers, and the triangle inscribed on a bronze disk…

From WTP Vol. VI #7 Drang Valley 1965 By Carl Boon As the world begins to break in three— three hawks fleeing, three sailboats in different and uncompromising winds— I see myself as stone and blood again. I touch my sunburned throat, I say to her who cannot listen, there is, after all, no God…

See more of their work in Vol. VI #7 The Heart’s Bones  By Jeff McRae The birds, I’ve heard them a thousand times before but they are still exotic to me. It’s not fair, all the ways you can hate someone by loving them. A twist, as they say. One that breaks the heart’s bones.…