New England Review

Alison C. Rollins

Five and a Possible 

Poetry from NER 39.3

 

Spades is a way of life for black folks.
My mother went into labor
In the middle of a game.
I was born as
Five and a possible. . . . 

 

[read the poem here]

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Alison C. Rollins, born and raised in St. Louis city, currently works as a librarian for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, TriQuarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. A Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow, she is also a 2016 recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Her debut poetry collection, Library of Small Catastrophes, is forthcoming (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).

Heather Christle

In Order of Appearance

New poetry from NER 39.2
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View From the Ruin by Jennifer Fitzgerald
The swimming hole abuts
the swimming mountain
she said and I believed her
until I began to think about it,
but I hated to see the mountain disappear
so instead I thought about weasels,
handbags, the future, people I hate

[Read more]

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Heather Christle is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Heliopause (Wesleyan University Press, 2015). She lives in a small village in Ohio.

Luther Hughes

Culture

“Hmmm-That Sentence Doesnt Know Where To Go From Here” by Qianqian Ye

The headlights remember boys like us: black, unbroken
by the law. As they man us to the curb, Brandon says
he’s been broken before. But not like this. The car parks.
Two white men get out. Their blue uniforms adore their muscles.
You boys up to trouble? 

[Read more]

 

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Luther Hughes is a Seattle native and author of Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018). He is the founder/editor-in-chief of Shade Journal and associate poetry editor for the Offing. A Cave Canem fellow and Windy City Times Chicago: 30 Under 30 Honoree, he has published his work in Columbia Poetry Review, BOAAT, TriQuarterly, Adroit Journal, and others. He is currently an MFA candidate in the Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. You can follow him on Twitter @lutherxhughes. He thinks you are beautiful.

Avia Tadmor

Song in Tammuz

Becalmed by Mattina Blue

                                                                    after Traci Brimhall 

The last time I saw my brother, he’d been dead
eighteen months and came as a ghost in the passenger seat,
his arm hanging out the window and whistling
an old boot camp song. He said
we were born on the two ends of Tammuz
and that our mother, ever since Dachau, knew God
wanted us close . . .

[Read more]

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Avia  Tadmor was born in Israel. She received her BA from Harvard University and is currently completing her MFA in poetry and literary translation at Columbia University, where she also teaches undergraduate writing. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Crab Orchard Review, Adroit Journal, Apogee, Fugue, Cider Press Review, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. Tadmor is the recent recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. She was named a finalist for the 2016 Indiana Review Poetry Prize.

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