E. M. KOMISAR
“She found her faith in static broadcast stations, / The grainiest and blurriest were best”
ANA MICHALOWSKY
“When small, she’d wake, hearthside, to cook and clean with courage. / But then the prince arrived: for her a princess carriage.”
AMIT MAJMUDAR
“How does he square his fiddling with rhymes / with such unbearably precarious times”
AMIT MAJMUDAR
“Caterpillars build their bunkers out / of terror.”
SCOTT RAY
“We smelled the smoke before we saw the fire”
JOHN POCH
“Don’t touch it yet. The gun is not a toy. / This isn’t home, or church, or work, or school”
QUINCY R. LEHR
“That was one more year of America, / a smoking fuselage that never crashes”
PEDRO POITEVIN
“I will remain here on the sidelines where / each Saturday I witness my son glide / over slide tackles with a cocky stride .”
Like many of yours, my life has been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 health crisis, and unfortunately, it’s been challenging to give the necessary attention to Measure Review. For now, I know we all need to focus on taking the right precautions to take care of ourselves, our loved ones and our greater communities—myself included.
Even so, I want our readers to know that—while our publishing schedule may be more intermittent in the coming weeks—Measure Review is far from finished.
Poetry serves an essential need in difficult times like these, and I will continue to post new poems as time allows—but when you’re missing new poems from Measure Review, I encourage you to spend a little time in our archives, reading the recommended poems at below each new poem, and exploring poetry by formal constraint with our tag cloud.
Until soon,
ASHLEY ANNA MCHUGH
ANA MICHALOWSKY
“We curse. We gather arms. We show our bloody beasts. / Once every word is drawn and swung, we turn to silence.”
DAVID ROSENTHAL
“You’ll come across it in some database– / an arcane list, an ancient family tree– / a ghost town on the edge of cyberspace”
SPENCER HUPP
“Hedge of high sumac that fences the yard / May you be fetid by spring from poor keeping”
JOHN PHILIP DRURY
“‘Ever the best of friends,’ your letters ended, / great expectations for a wave of years / that promised more reunions, correspondence. / But all that’s over.”
MICHAEL BROWN
“Like Job, he kneels, hands placed before him on the ground”
QUINCY R. LEHR
“Up late. The wife asleep, the laptop screen / a nightlight of sorts, I semi-surf the web— / a Twitter deep dive—another angry teen / was shocked by murder into eloquence.”
JEAN L. KREILING
“The palette loses warmth: the hair gone gray, / the teeth not quite so white”
J.C. SCHARL
“See, along the path those clustered sword-like leaves? / Those are the irises, my son”
ADAM TAVEL
“One horseshoe clangs against an iron spike. / You breathe them in: their glimmered bayonets.”
