A collection of the best poetry from the floating bridge press chapbook competition. for you.
I carried death inside me for several days, waiting
That man had no ticket to the concert; he pressed his ear to the wall,
but no song found him
Bees were swarming; they made sleeves and a hood around me when I stood still
All winter a deep booming as black ice shifted on the lake, cracking into continents
at extremes of physical existence, moments where neither scientists nor shamans can predict what will happen next, something unexpected is witnessed in flame that has burned its way through the color spectrum & decided to be blue. this heat demands communion with his brethren, takes on robes of indigo as airy skies do, mirrors the…
Monarchs are migrating once more, and as usual hang in great clusters of orange and black in the same groves their insect ancestors flapped through—purposeful dry leaves on a gusty day, the air a frenzy of handfuls tossed and lifted and carried as colorful and fleeting as childhood memories; my grandmother’s face is a tree…
I walk through a snowy wood in search of ambition. Let’s say ambition looks like a gold swan. Let’s say it radiates a perceptible vitality and constantly twinkles. Ice crunches beneath me. My boots are soaked through, feet freezing. The voice of a distant master commands me to endure the harshness of my search which,…
Scott Ferry helps to heal our Veterans as a RN. His daughter is a purple belt and his wife is a doctor, so he is well protected. Current work can be found in Bitter Oleander, Cobalt, Chaleur, and Scryptic. Photograph by Alex Iby.
Mom called my south Albuquerque hotel room, said she wouldn’t allow me to visit. I wasn’t welcome. After traveling all the way from Bellingham, I was only a few miles away from her home. My girlfriend commented, That’s family. Now we’ll get to do more sightseeing. She reluctantly agreed to Santa Fe, but declined Taos,…
*Originally appeared on JMWW. Devon Wootten is a faculty member at Whitman College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing, Fence, LIT, Aufgabe, and Colorado Review, among others. A former resident of Yaddo and Anderson Ranch, he holds an MFA from the University of Montana and a PhD from the University of Iowa. He lives with…
Devon Wootten is a faculty member at Whitman College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing, Fence, LIT, Aufgabe, and Colorado Review, among others. A former resident of Yaddo and Anderson Ranch, he holds an MFA from the University of Montana and a PhD from the University of Iowa. He lives with his wife among…
*Originally published in Posit 15. Devon Wootten is a faculty member at Whitman College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing, Fence, LIT, Aufgabe, and Colorado Review, among others. A former resident of Yaddo and Anderson Ranch, he holds an MFA from the University of Montana and a PhD from the University of Iowa. He…
*“Stop Motion” is in the forthcoming book Give a Girl Chaos (March 15, 2019 from Mastodon Books). Heidi Seaborn is Poetry Editor for The Adroit Journal, a New York University MFA candidate and the author of an award-winning debut book of poetry Give a Girl Chaos (see what she can do) forthcoming in early 2019 from Mastodon Books. Since…
Not that he minded coming in out of the rain, shaking water from his boots in the mud room, placing them side by side with the other pairs of slick rubbers, umbrellas left open, set like enormous flower petals upon an oriental rug dirty with its own versions of flowers. Nor did he mind the…
What if, for us, there is no dark no cold dripping November spruce, no headstones, not even a name, the seasons saying relent with each drip. What if vetch and sweet pea tire of their work— honeysuckle exhausts its bloom? When the last visitor, a century ago tossed an apple it grew, but now gives…
