New Poetry Journals

Journals are a good way to be exposed to some of the best new poetry available. Of course, the sheer number of new poems published regularly ensures that they don't represent all or even most of it, especially with so many failing in the current economic atmosphere. But they are still a good way to taste and try different poets and styles.

Spoon River Poetry Review (srpr)

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How We Met

- Allison Joseph

Not in a smoky club with me

in red velvet, décolletage heaving.

Not in a bird sanctuary,

no glossy feathers floating

 

down around our heads.

Not in church, no big-hatted,

big-bosomed ladies orchestrating

our union. Not on a beach,

 

no starfish, sizzled flesh.

No street corner, no streetlamp,

no halo of light blessing

our moment of meeting forward.

Not in Rockaway, Piscataway,

Biscayne Bay or Pismo Beach.

No Boston or Brazil. No, instead,

picture a sagging sofa

in a shotgun grad-student house,

keg party where old students

check new recruits: wary poets

circling each other, fiction

 

writers divvying up plots.

Eager, silly, 21, I plop down

next to you, extend my hand

at the instant you reveal

your hometown, and all I see

is a girl like me spat on by

whites, Elizabeth Eckford

caught in rabid crossfire

Could they be your family,

your neighbors? But you

don’t stutter, don’t blanch,

don’t redden or shrink in shame.

“Central High, 1957,” you say,

drawing close the hand I pulled

back, pulling me into you,

past all that hurt called history.

Copyright 2013 Spoon River Poetry Review

Frogpond

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Wistful Thinking (haibun)

- Tom Painting, Atlanta, Georgia

It rained the night we stayed in the cabin. I recall the sound on the tin roof. Earlier in the day we had picked apples in an abandoned orchard and later pared them for pie, cutting away the wormy parts. That night we slept in the loft where the warmth would remain once the fire went out.

divorced
after a long soak
I drain the tub

Copyright 2013 Haiku Society of America