POETRY CRITICISM FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE
N.a.u.s.h.e.e.n.. E.u.s.u.f


Chalk

How can I not resent the felt tips
that glide across the glazed surface
of the whiteboard's enameled exterior,
fluid and graceful as a dancer on ice?

Call me old school if you like,
but I don't run dry in the open air,
or rub off with a tissue, or fade
with use. I've got grit and character

and resistance, unlike those slippery
dilettantes. There's something primal
about white marks etched on black,
something unmatched by the ephemeral

doodles of dry-erase markers. I hark
back to counting cattle on cave walls
and trying to make sense of the cycles
of the moon, to man's first scrawled

attempts at art and myth as he tried
to create something that would last,
to assert his existence against the
darkness, unknowable and vast.



Infidelity

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
            --Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"


Strange how it's almost no surprise to find
the photos stashed away: the familiar face recast,
the vapid smile of another, their arms entwined,
the flush of forbidden lust, heady and fast.

You've always been the strong one, he used to say.
But it was filled with the intent to be lost,
like childhood homes and friendships gone astray.
Things will come to pass as ordained they must.

Still, you can't help but wonder how and why,
though it hardly matters--you are free.
And when he returns, reluctant to meet the eye,
you regard him not with anger, but pity:

the face you loved, the eyes you thought you'd known,
it's no disaster, this love you've long outgrown.

































AUTHOR BIO

Nausheen Eusuf lives and teaches in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She holds an M.A. from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and her poems have appeared in Acumen, Orbis, Envoi, Mobius, and Off the Coast. After teaching for five years, she is heading back to graduate school at the University of Georgia in the fall.

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Maryann Corbett
Nausheen Eusuf
Anna Evans
Dolores Hayden
Luann Landon
Susan McLean
Annabelle Moseley
Alexandra Oliver
Wendy Vardaman
Doris Watts
Holly Woodward
Marly Youmans

FEATURED ARTIST
Lauren Clay: Addressing feelings of lost cultural identity and sitelessness, this work investigates ideas of the self as discerned through the lense of place and site. The search is influenced by various mythologies of place, such as the inherited place, found through home and community; the internal place which exists in the psyche or imagination; and the discovered place, found through study or travel.
ARCHIVES
LINKS
POETRY
32 Poems
The Academy of American Poets
The Atlantic
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The Cortland Review
Favorite Poem Project
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The Iowa Review
Light Quarterly
Modern American Poetry
Measure
The Poem Tree
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
Raintown Review
Slate
String Poet
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Verse Daily
Women's Poetry Listserv
The Yale Review

CONFERENCES
AWP
Bread Loaf
Poetry by the Sea
Sewanee


PUBLISHERS

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BOOKS
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OTHER RESOURCES
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