Poetry
Nickole Brown is the author of Sister and Fanny Says. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she volunteers at two different animal sanctuaries. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of poems about these animals, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press »
Poetry
It is an honor and a pleasure to be welcoming remarkable poet and visionary Destiny Hemphill as Poetry Editor alongside me here at Southern Cultures. Too often poetry journals, or even the small space poetry takes up in larger magazines, become vacuums that amplify the taste of one person. We’ve worked hard to make sure »
Poetry
said the rabbis, around the Torah. And this worldis lousy with them. More than we can counton our dog walk alone: chainlink and stone and white wooden pickets. Fences to keep people’s bad barking dogsin, to keep our bad barking dog out. His nostrils flaringwide as a twirled skirt as he reads the tales of »
Poetry
After the fire went out,we kept burning.I confused the embersin your hair for stardust,but who was I, then,to know the log was litfrom the inside,flush with its own grief?I’ve buried myselfin the compost heap. Before the flood swept the lemons away,there was a garden. How temperamentalthe tomatoes were to any change in the weather.We did »
Poetry
Circular breather, our dog can whine without ceasing, his tail thumping the wall beside the bed to call me up and out to the yard instead. In moonlight, the hydrangeas’ white blossoms are a zodiac of branch-bound constellations. Once, God called Abraham out from his tent to the open field to count the uncountable lights above, promising offspring bountiful as dust, »
Poetry
––for Mary Oliver Ain’t no foxes here, Mary. Ain’t no grasshoppers restingin my picnic palm. Ain’t too many creatures worth a poem like yours, just mewling strays tucked under the dangerous warmthof a pickup’s hood, just poodles with painted nails clicking pink across mama’s linoleum floor—so few animals left to this chain-storesprawl, this clocked-in, bottled, »
Poetry
Hale County, Alabama LEDus stand here ____ future dinosaurnear the errors of three hands clappingwhat indifferent god particle sparking,through the strong ear and out the other.perhaps forgetting some string theory dangling,out inside the dinning deafness
Poetry
Do you, too, wincewhen they whisperexotic in hushed breath,fingers pointedin your direction,your inanimate bodypoised to pummelbehind the smudged glass?Has anyone ever asked youhow it feels to be slitand stuffed from the crownof head to the tip of tail,what was once majesticnow hanging from the walllike an ornamentadorning the molding?What a parody, these people,in their tiger-striped »
Poetry
Crystal Simone Smith’s haiku is infused with a profound love for and appreciation of the natural world. As one of a growing community of Black haiku poets, Smith’s work is also that of an activist, born from her life as a Black woman and mother of two Black sons. Her words resonate as much-needed interventions »
Poetry
I wanted to ask the trees. do you remember. were you there. did you shudder. did your skin cry out against the skin of my great uncle’s skin. was the smell of bark a different smell from the smell of meat flesh. human meat flesh. beloved father husband lover friend man flesh. could the air »
Poetry
We’ve published poetry in our pages since nearly the beginning. So when our friends at the CELLAR DOOR—UNC‘s oldest undergraduate literary magazine—said their Spring 2020 Issue would be delayed due to the pandemic, we threw open our own doors and asked them to join us. We’re proud to present the work of seven Carolina undergraduates »
Poetry
If in the crinkling thin as air metallicblankets there are flashes signaling backand forth over the little bodies wrappedinside them sleeping on cage floor, gym floor, floor of a defunct warehouse, don’t think of torchfires, beacons of distress, or in the softnessany sign of soothing though they’re softas tissue, even softer yet untearable, a just »