Prac Crit

First Published

poems first published by Prac Crit

Ablutions for Midsummer by Rachael Boast

Eagle Rock, Buckland in the Moor / / Over and over the moon washes her fragments / in the water, moving downstream as she does so, / following the foxglove wall to where yesterday / I walked on, seeing what I hadn't seen, hearing / what I hadn't heard, alert to the stresses / falling into wa...

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Extreme Silentness by Caleb Klaces

(excerpt from Fatherhood) / / / To relieve the men / from / conversation / the dark rustles. / Glove compartment / baby wipes / to shoot / the stranger / is the breeze passed from / sea and hill and wood / to the car to the beard. / It is difficult to feel the beard because / only m...

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Terra Nullius by Michael Symmons Roberts

There is a victory parade moving through the city, / in dress-down garb to look like us, / in its cavalcade of mid-price family sedans, / because the limos, black-lacquered like miso bowls, / are stabled away, the tunics on racks in warehouses / because it is too soon for the trappings of the f...

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from Ten Thousand Things by Emily Critchley

The dog is a part of every human / experience. It is very happy on every one / of its limbs. It bites / does not bite / the hand that mocks it. / Besides which, leading a dog / to water means only one thing. River / ’s a mouth, the dog is endless. She cannot / change what she does not / see....

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Principalities, Dominions by Gwyneth Lewis

No sooner do I start to settle / To copy my wasp (see opposite) than, / Trapped between net curtain and pane, / Yet another bluebottle loses control, panics, / Ricochets with that tiny death-rattle / That Emily Dickinson misnamed / As a fly when she died in her poem. / My mind’s an insect tha...

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To the Poet Who After My Reading Said ‘Your Poems Are Good. Eccentric, But Good.’ by Kathleen Ossip

Imagine that you, at eighteen, / in Paris for the first time with / all your loving ideals about / penises intact, in your new / mini-trenchcoat and smelling the / smell of garlic and unfiltered / smoke and assaultive coffee, were / approached from behind. Imagine / un Français, bald...

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The Best Is Yet to Come by Amy Key

I was ashamed, but undaunted (my epithet?). / —Maggie Nelson / / / i. / / The heart is permanently gory. / / ii. / / I imbue all this pausing with great importance / but phoniness slides in like one more drink. / / iii. / / I reached too hard for courage / and pushed it furth...

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The Ballad of R. D. Laing by Conor Carville

Between the skull in Connemara / and the one beneath the skin, / lies the album sleeve aglimmer / in the bargain-columbarium / of a charity shop in Banglatown, / Banglatown or Stepney, / the skull that glows, all unbeknown / where poetry and psychiatry / shacked up for a time, their Magic-Ey...

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Hey, hey by Matthew Welton

Think of it as the rubber ball we’ve hidden / in the fruit bowl. Think of it as sludgy coffee. / Think of it like it’s a bunch of balloons. / / Imagine it’s the voices on the recordings / we deleted. Think of it as the empty roads / you see from the empty train. / / Think of it as the lull...

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Scarlet by Kiki Petrosino

/ / / Long ago, I was a figlia with a fever. / Little filly, foaled in my dark star-bed / where I thought I’d die pretty soon. / / Lying there, my fists held candy eggs / of logic, molten math. My pink death already / long ago. I was a figlia with a fever / / & I doubled in the neck...

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