We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
I found an octopus in the snow
And not knowing what it was or why it was there, I gutted it
as if a hunter
To me, up to my elbows in bladder, the ink was a surprise
I wore it like opera gloves in the moonlight
So many mistook my passion for gangrene
One followed me into an orchestra pit. If I could only say now
what my arms said
I took up a bassoon & aimed it at a chandelier
As the house lights came down, the audience lost their places
They were swimming in a maelstrom of inklings
L.S. Klatt’s first book, Interloper, won the 2008 Juniper Prize. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Drunken Boat,Eleven Eleven, and jubilat.
Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.
Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.
In her new book, Danish poet Olga Ravn writes with open love, pity, and compassion for her strange yet familiar creations.
Draconian individual punishment distracts from systemic change and reinforces the cruelest and most racist system of incarceration on the planet.
Our well-being depends on a better understanding of how the logic of labor has twisted our relationship with pleasure.
A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975. Registered 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more about our mission