Live Nude Poems

An Affair on Lombardy Street The landlocked Airbnb has a nautical theme and an irregularly shaped board nailed to one wall that might work if they installed hooks, I offered to the man I’ve loved for 24 years before we kissed and carried each other into the bedroom. The backyard is at this time off-limits to guests, though we are encouraged to dispense of our trash there due to an ant problem for which we may be charged. Renters may also be charged for using acne products immediately prior the towels. Likewise, silicone lubricants are prohibited. The Airbnb sits a block and a half from the marketwhere my cousin and I used to buy croissant sandwiches when the jazz bar closed where the man I’ve loved for 24 years used to play. The Airbnb has a keypad for a lock and I give him the code. I wake to his face for the first time in years. I send him home in a shirt wearing wrinkles and the perfume my ex-husband sayssmells like my mother. My hosts have left two thick, hooded robes hanging in th...

Trespassing Aloud Listening to the wind misspell my name I sense desperation, a bruise of waxen yellow flesh. The wind explores the ruins of a factory abandoned decades ago, a complex of smokestacks and oil tanks, brown weathered brick and rusting machines the use of which no one alive knows. Why is the wind taunting me with its private misery when grease stains almost eighty years old still offer comforting stinks. I shouldn’t be here exploring private if useless property. I should go home and practice spelling my name correctly in case the wind has influenced my flimsy sense of myself. The factory closed after the war. Not even mice find sustenance or aesthetic pleasure in noting the aloof geometry, purposeful and rigid enough to warp the wind. I pocket a large rusty bolt and declare myself a petty thief, giving voice to all this loss. William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recen...

Our Most Vulnerable Maybe the phrase has always meant to misdirect A gunmen is taking aim at shadows in dark corners It must be someone’s job to ask after each life still here I was once someone noticed each must consider No fear I know like alone awake & shaking Losing all my grounding thoughts with no protectors left Mark Danowsk y is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry. He is the author of four poetry books. His latest poetry collection is Meatless (Plan B Press). Take Care is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press in 2025. His poems have appeared in many journals including Right Hand Pointing, The New Verse News, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Summerset Review, Alba, The Healing Muse, and Gargoyle.

skin this skin has started to fray reveals a torn elbow a tattered knee a body stitched up too many times. I tug at stray threads loose buttons watch my days unravel. this is a poor material to work with the weave all wrong a coat grown thin and faded      a patchwork blanket. I wait for the scars to harden a fresh skin to emerge pink, beautiful become new, grow from the inside out but I have slid from silk to denim become a worn fabric that cannot be shed there is a wound that doesn’t close a bruise that never heals when the night is cold I am a cheap cloth that will not mend Ken Cathers as a  B.A. from the University of Victoria and a M.A. from York University in Toronto.  He has just published his eighth book of poetry entitled Home Town with Impspired Press in England. He has also recently published two chapbooks, one entitled Kiefer by broke press and the other entitled Legoland Noir by Block Party Press. His work has app...

Doped with Religion, Sex and TV “Working class hero, my foot,” Darleen spat. “Pampered British rock star’s more like it. He don’t know nothin’ about no working class,” she sneered, “and that Jap witch he married. She’s probly the one who put them ideas in his head.” Darleen and I worked on the assembly line at the Capitol Records plant, putting fresh-pressed LPs into sleeves, the packaged albums into cardboard boxes, the boxes onto pallets for the forklift guy to take them away to the loading dock. “I used to like some of them early songs. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night,’ but you can have this stuff. Working class hero! Who does he think he’s kidding?” I stuffed my impulse to defend Lennon, point out his poverty in postwar Liverpool, the broken family, the absent sailor father; mainly offended by Doreen’s naked racism, pitying her for the misogyny she’d absorbed from generations of farmers on the prairie. I was a college student, working part...

retaliation it was two weeks after you returned from rehab, dad I found the first vodka bottle, a Smirnoff pint, stashed beneath the driver's seat of your Ford. I propped the empty on the dashboard like a bobble-head. I didn't tell you this then, but... going into my room and leaving my dog-eared copies of Penthouse on my pillow next to the Vaseline... that was a pretty good comeback. Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Day now living in a valley in rural Alabama. His latest collection of poetry from Roadside Press "Abandoned By All Things" is out now.