“Our masters and almost friends,/in lab coats and white Cossack smocks,/floated like ghosts across the hillside,/holding our leashes, staring blindly/at the lens./Sniffing, loafing, eager, and at ease,/everything excited us!”—By Richard St. John Speculative…

“Then—/when the once sturdy barrier/is too old; beyond repair—/down to some skeleton/of former fence glory,/the meadowlarks seek new perches/to sing prairie songs/on last autumn’s stakes/of mullein stalks,/yellow breasts glowing like rising suns,/as the…

“The world will wrestle you into place and pin you/down while the weeks slip past./Don’t be/so easily corralled. Buck it./Go visit your fucking folk.”— Jacob Boyd Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly…

“They play at being retired or married, spend the night in a featherbed four feet off the floor, where/they make love, where she crawls beneath the covers and the bed creaks with no…

“In a civilization or a family no one knows what comes next./Not the protozoa. Not the whelk./ When we rise, washed smooth, we pat each other/because we are surprised to find each other/more…

“The excerpt of the poetry project featured here uses science fiction and fantasy to weave narratives that stem from the historic moments of Igbo Landing. In May 1803, 75 Africans from the Igbo…

“My granddad gathered up all the small farms in his hand, shook them like a fistful of change, their histories reduced to names: Brownlee, Stitt, Coon Island, Grady. I grew up near Oil…

“My foremothers/stand behind me/dressed in the indigo of the cosmos/stars for eyes with no recipe/ or cookbook in hand/just thousands of hearts resonating,/It’s time for you to know too./They pour into me.”—Glenis Redmond…

“Boleman-Herring took up poetry before she could write, and gave it up, for all intents and purposes (jazz lyrics excepted), after reading Auden. How does one, why should one (she says) follow an…

“Donne’s flea, Keats’s cricket, Dickinson’s buzzing fly,/and Neruda’s lust-filled generic crawler/ making its way across a lover’s hip, to name a few.”—By Rick Mulkey Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—January…