Poems for Persons of Interest

Felicity Teague is the author of the poetry collection From Pittville to Paradise . She lives near Cheltenham, England. Revenge of the Washing Machine Whoa there! Don’t wrench me open so darned wide – truth is, I’m breaking, warped with all the use. You overload . Last time, I almost died! Well, this is just the usual abuse.   You can’t stop spilling, can you? Trousers, shirts and, worst of all, unlucky underwear. Dude, I could catalogue a hundred hurts you’ve made me suffer through your lax self-care.   You know, one day I might just shout, “ENOUGH!”, give you my sternest treatment, roar on roar till nothing’s left but tiny bits of fluff… and then I’ll stomp across the kitchen floor!   You’ll fall, in awe. And I’ll begin my reign as Queen Machine. Now kiss my filter drain!

Matt Stefon is the author of the poetry collection  Beyond the Spaghettiville Bridge , from Alien Buddha Press. He lives in New England. Baloney It doesn’t match up—I know it doesn’t match up to the expectation that you had when I came home last night back from the store with a bag that wasn’t exactly full of any of the things you had by then already come to expect after countless market trips before—on which I’d spoiled you—like a spoiled king, but which contained the substance of the meal I, over-work weary, then made you, and left out to cool and then, asleep, left out all night. And spoiled. So now, to break the fast, fresh cold cuts served with love on a bread plate. You can even eat this plate. That is great.

James McConachie has been published by Iambapoet, Eat the Storms, Black Bough , the Dark Mountain project and Pilgrim House Magazine . His debut collection, Consolamentum , was published by Black Bough in 2024. Anthro We invented fairies, for some reason, spritely scampered hand-friends, puckish, princely imps, homunculi, winged tiny heathens. And I wonder why and whether, simply   the familiar comforts of a face are what we need, to feel assured, at home with all our rights, as the ascendant race and brute dominion as a founding tome.   While all around the air, the limbs of trees are dense with weightless lives of dazzling song, from a kaleidoscopic panoply of miracles. I fear we have it wrong   to centre wonder, as a part of us. Since seed set fat, we have been ever thus.

Frances Boyle is a noted Canadian poet and fiction writer. Her first novel comes out from The Porcupine's Quill next week.  Wing loading   A hawk’s spare journey, fencepost to power line, wingspread remembering all the places she’s been, the nest among poplars, the sway of the wind. The distance she travels in an afternoon broken by the amethyst sky, clouds bruised and limping into place overhead, the gaps where the light shows brilliant in cracks. She hunches her head against the ruffling of feathers, the unsleeking of her plumage, barbs bent transverse to the grain by wind and wet. She hover-hops, rights herself. What home has she now?