bostonpoetry

[bostonpoetry]

The Things That Destroy Me

The Things That Destroy Me

by Michelle Kubilis 1. Her name slips past his lips after they had been on mine. 2. He says she won’t let go but his hand is holding tight. 3. I catch him smiling at her pictures. “Just good memories, that’s all.” 4. She thinks she’s better for him. He agrees. 5. The break-up. An ex for an ex. 6. Him & her.

[bostonpoetry]

Polarity

by Michelle Kubilis I had known it the whole time our love wouldn’t fade like sunlight through trees It was a lie when I told you that we were stretched thin – an emptiness searching for hope. we were stretched thin – an emptiness searching for hope. It was a lie when I told you that our love wouldn’t fade like sunlight through trees. I had known it the whole time

[bostonpoetry]

a baked affair / fucking gluten

a baked affair / fucking gluten

by Michelle Kubilis crumpling tissue paper organs pumping pumping pumping gas pedal to the belly, twisting insides to balloon animals & shaking my snowglobe brain. but those sex eyes suave, velvet RED velvet – they squeezed me good filled me up then left the morning after.

[bostonpoetry]

I Am My Mother’s Immigration Record

I Am My Mother’s Immigration Record

by Michelle Kubilis I breathe our island – almond blossoms (virgin buds) tinged with salt air; crying ashes from Mount Etna, sweating the Mediterranean sea, droplets onto black grit – My great-grandparents’ sand. My mother’s sand. My sand.

[bostonpoetry]

Body Count

by Shaun Terry Another dead body sits on the pile, reeking of cigarettes and gin, half-smiling up at me behind smeared makeup, its eyes rotating, trying to lock into mine. The threads of your little cornflower date dress stretch – barely making it – from one hip all the way to the other hip, and you smell like roses and acetone. I fumbled over microwavable cliches and feigned confusion of the…

[bostonpoetry]

READ MY PEOMS NAWR!!!!!!

by SFM ROSES ARE RED VIOLETS ARE BLUE POEMS ARE HARD TRIPLE D!!! BIO:  I AM AWESOME

[bostonpoetry]

Five Haiku

by Adjei Agyei-Baah drifting cotton clouds the sickle moon harvests all alone – gradually unseating the pond skater from his water throne harmattan winds – shea butter market sellers hold the sun in water sprinkles – May rains drop- the bamboo fence free from termites’ plaster – end of the road- railway track runs into earth

[bostonpoetry]

Melissa Smokes

[bostonpoetry]

Melissa Smoking

[bostonpoetry]

Meeting An Estranged Son

by Kushal Poddar

Short messages of blue enters the treetop. Grilled cheese and nothing- he wants. Water in the tall glass alerts every time some car passes. Moon rises atop the mill’s chute. We see no stars these days. I want him to want some more. Grilled cheese. Next? His fingers hide his palm. You cannot just return and make everything right. He doesn’t say and says. In a message, his mother m…

[bostonpoetry]

To The One Holding The Cleaver

by Kushal Poddar

The fat street dog says something good about the butcher. All I hear, a woof, has days, months years of love streaming upwards. The butcher has blood on his apron. Because this day I have a banquet at home, I see smileys, red. And the goat head smiles. The dog’s curly tail too, smiles. The butcher’s cleaver blinks a sunny day.

[bostonpoetry]

Night Telephone

by Kushal Poddar

The clarity of a call burns a hole in my soul. I turn and turn, find no door to the bedroom where the old telephone wakes up from its sleep once or twice in a year. My feet are hooves from slaughterhouse truths. I move in a circle whose corners slash me, chop me into seceded desires. No image. Nothing except the telephone in the bedroom where a linen sea swells, ebbs again and…

[bostonpoetry]

The Cardboard Box

by Janet I. Buck

I tell the world: “Stop rushing by without me there.” Don’t walk as if you love the ground, do not feel gravity. I ask our peach geranium, named Mabel Marvel in a pot: “Please wait to bloom” until I’m standing straight as pencils sitting on eraser heads. Until I’m wandering the yard and watching you unfold your petals one by one, instead of guessing how you look. I tell our…

[bostonpoetry]

The Turtle Shell

by Janet I. Buck

“Did you know that women in Afghanistan wear marbles in a net tied to their thighs, so they can shift a certain way and have a climax now and then.” That was all the doctor said, expecting me to laugh, I guess. I tried, but felt a hematoma brewing under pale skin.

Suddenly, I turn to stone. Thinking of their cloister robes of dark black wool, wire mesh across their eyes,…

[bostonpoetry]

The Paper Punch

by Janet I. Buck

It’s important to note my paper punch is 25 years old, maybe even 30 now. It has a sloppy plastic back. This machine is tired, but it works, only if I take a fist and press it down, across my other withered hand, hard enough to strain my wrist. I refrain from stuffing too much paper in between 3 spaced and busy metal teeth.

I’ve filled a notebook full of poems in less than 60…

[bostonpoetry]

Soliloquies I Did Not Plan

by Janet I. Buck

Watch that Blue Jay on the fence, tall green grass that’s grown a foot in just two weeks. A curly, plush geranium the color of a pomegranate getting ripe inside a bowl—I place them both where suns rise near an eastern window, letting light in fast enough to feed my hunger to survive. I roll an orange in my hand, pretend an angel or a ghost dropped that coin right on my bed, to…

[bostonpoetry]

The Fruit Market

by Wayne F. Burke

I got sent to work

at the Fruit Market

on the Chelsea-Everett line

where I sat in a shack

and checked-in trucks

entering and leaving.

I wore a sky blue cop uniform.

One day before work

I stopped in the hotel-bar

across the street from the market

for a quick one

and realized,

after I entered

that everyone in the joint had suddenly

become quiet

and I drank my beer quickly

and…