A chronological archive of poetry published in Cleaver’s quarterly literary issues from 2013 to present …
December 26, 2023
Matt Thomas ANNIVERSARY POEM II Remember the tracked snow it was last to melt and so was like a suture ...
December 26, 2023
Erin Mizrahi I MISSED ANOTHER DEADLINE BUT IT’S OKAY IT’S REALLY OKAY & it’s for the best my CV is ...
December 26, 2023
Todd RobinsonEverywhere the World is Green and Dying 1 ...
December 26, 2023
Michelle BittingManger, Emptied I saw the shepherds slogging through red dust,Their sandals kicked up a ruddy cataclysmWith palm trees sighing ...
December 26, 2023
Yolanda Wisher germantown avenue speaks & coulter school to school the dark writes itself a poem of youngblood façades playin ...
December 26, 2023
Ginger Ayla DRINK, ANYWAY, THE LIGHT There are creatures adapted to living so low in the ocean they can only ...
December 26, 2023
Gideon Huan-LangTRANSNESS AS PERPETUAL PAPERBOY Imagine: Victorian hand-me-downs, black suspenders, tweed-lined cap. And he is holleringabout the end of the ...
September 28, 2023
--In the line that begins "fibromyalgia, anxiety, nerve pain..." I changed "GERD! Depression," to "GERD, depression," because I don't think ...
September 28, 2023
Clara Bush Vadala PARTHENOGENESIS Sonnet Crown for Anna the anaconda from Boston’s New England Aquarium, 2019 Her unborn litter will ...
September 28, 2023
Zachariah Claypole White OCD SONNET #3 Sonnet enough of poetry—i want only honesty between us how once for cbt i ...
September 28, 2023
Maya Salameh MUSIC TO DROWN BY Shape Poem do you understand? you speak & the sun spills out. this is ...
September 28, 2023
Penny Johnson LOCKDOWN Pantoum Four days until they shamble back to school. Even the lithe dreamers, penchant for subordinate clause, ...
September 28, 2023
Third Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition In “grindr villanelle,” Matt Broomfield creates the unlikely hook-up between the queer dating ...
September 28, 2023
Honorable Mention, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition Geoffrey Billetter GORGON SON Geoffrey Billetter is a Chicago poet and prose writer ...
September 28, 2023
First Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition I love Weijia Pan’s contemporary approach to the Sapphic stanza—a lyric poetic form ...
September 28, 2023
Jeff Pearson ENGAGEMENT CORONA “The mouth of weeds marriage.” She shivered. “It’s—it’s a death!” –John Ashbery, “Idaho” Absence holds rings ...
June 29, 2023
Ky LohrenzCONTAINMENT FAILURE At the party, I watch drunk men piss in a sink & all I see is freedom ...
June 28, 2023
Lynn FingerIT NEVER SEEMED WRONG TO LOVE YOU, IT'S JUST THAT WE WERE HERONS It never seemed wrong to love ...
June 28, 2023
Leonard KressCOLLOQUY OF YOUNG MOTHERS ON VENANGO STREET By one a.m. they hoard the crossroad stoops, spotlit by squealing cars ...
June 28, 2023
Laura RubyAMONG THE WRECKAGE 1. Earth after the asteroid strikes, leaving the Chicxulub crater twelve miles deep. 2. The dinosaurs, ...
June 28, 2023
Grayson Thompsonjuniper poplar I knew a guy who lost over 100 lbs by running away from himself he taught me ...
March 29, 2023
Robin KinzerMESENTERIC PANNICULITIS AT NINE MONTHS Today, they applied electrodes to my abdomen, then told me to slowly up the ...
March 29, 2023
Yujia LiPISSER CLAM Learned today that clams break with the slightest pressure between forefinger and thumb. I jumped at the ...
March 29, 2023
Evan Andershummingbird sketches iced ruby oolong— hints of soothing baked pear, cedar, cacao, the miscarriage. precarious masculinity drizzled upon lamb ...
March 29, 2023
Jordan RanftCREATION MYTH WITH CHORUS OF WORMS IN MY BRAIN nothing springs forward it spills as it would from a ...
March 29, 2023
Nathan LippsTWO POEMS Controlled Burn To the north they have set fire to a thousand acres of a very real ...
March 29, 2023
Kevin EguizabalTHE SHAPE OF A FOG It was in the water, the shape Of a fog. Surrounding me with ambiguity ...
November 29, 2022
CLEAVER’S FORM AND FORM-BREAKING POETRY CONTEST Judge: Diane Seuss Contest Manager: Claire Oleson We were thrilled to receive 370 entries ...
September 26, 2022
Michelle BittingFOR PHIL All day we’ve bent like Benedictine monks over armoires and bookshelves, rubbing the house clean of grime ...
September 26, 2022
Varun ShettyO It is a circle, a cipher, the opposite of something. It is formed by an old man’s lips ...
September 26, 2022
Lydia DowneySHOOTING BUCK Peeking around the cliff, I meet my father’s eyes. The horizon’s glowing haze & morbid curiosity as ...
September 26, 2022
John SchneiderTHAW Still burdened with winter’s whiteness .............and the darkness of prolonged nights, we gaze out at our world through ...
June 24, 2022
Mimi YangA LETTER FROM MY FATHER TO ME My mother asked me to kill a spider, so I take her ...
June 24, 2022
Matt ThomasPOP SONG These eggs that I wash every morning before tucking them into the carton remind me of washing ...
June 24, 2022
Sadie Shorr-ParksTWO POEMS Winter on Earth In my bruise blue Subaru with the drooling sunroof rattling down skyline drive. Winter ...
June 24, 2022
Mitchell UntchTWO POEMS Twin I I. I had thought we’d said everything we needed to say when you were in ...
June 24, 2022
Mateo Perez LaraMEMORY REMAINS AS SKELETON The lover: I cut into Mark’s frail // pulled out anxious apologies weathered by ...
June 24, 2022
Alex Wells Shapiroa rust chewed pipe The glug above my left ear (a rust chewed pipe next to my right ...
March 25, 2022
Quinn RennerfeldtA POEM WHEREIN I TRY, AND FAIL, TO IDENTIFY MY TUESDAY GENDER Have you ever been forced .............to swallow ...
March 25, 2022
Robin NeidorfLEAVE NO TRACE the full moon rises in the cleft .................................between rock and green-turning- gold on gravel trails twenty ...
March 25, 2022
Philip SchaeferDON’T KICK THE DOG Just last week doves glued to the beach, stuck between physics and chemistry. Beneath the ...
March 25, 2022
Ronda BroatchEVEN THE DOGS The horses hid the day I walked out to pasture to catch my appaloosa. Ferro, eluding ...
March 25, 2022
William EricksonBREAKFAST SOLILOQUY After breakfast I discovered an accretion disk around the empty container of raspberries, an iridescent plate of ...
December 20, 2021
Katrina RobertsFrom KENNINGS Visual Erasures Katrina Roberts is the author of four books of poems and a chapbook, as well ...
December 20, 2021
Brenda TaulbeeREGENERATION I want to put my head down .........................and sleep like I used to know ....................................how to sleep. .........................I ...
December 20, 2021
Julie BeneshSHOW TUNES My ex- husband texting quotations, marked: “I know all about your standards…” Because July: .............Music Man. last ...
December 20, 2021
Kelley WhiteI AM LOSING MY HANDS. The right hand middle finger middle joint swollen. I can almost see it. And ...
December 20, 2021
Karin Wraley BarbeeTEENAGE ASTRONOMY Men watch her from her ceiling, Cepheus and Hercules, pressed there by a girl on the ...
December 20, 2021
Peter GrandboisBEND AND TOUCH THE GRASS Though the house is quiet another day nearly .............snuffed out Shadows slipping through a ...
December 20, 2021
Maddie BaxterTHE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW My left leg is an eroded coastline. Squeeze my thigh to feel the ...
September 23, 2021
Tingyu LiuMONOCULAR Remembering, still: Sunday egg scrambles, green ..............peppers and sharp cheddar adorning ..............our fingers, coffee pot chuckling. Tilt and: ...
September 23, 2021
Melody WilsonSILVER FALLS We have driven east this bright afternoon, the two of us, young parents on a break from ...
September 23, 2021
Sara MaeBIOLUMINESCENCE The pregnancy scare skulks through bay grasses. It tips us over like cows & drains our peach liqueur ...
September 23, 2021
Melody WilsonSURVIVOR GUILT My sister slept in the laundry room, the door fastened by a cinch strap and a nail ...
September 23, 2021
Tom LaichasFLOUNDER i The fingertips know things. Their ridged whorls .... confess... the ... whole.. body’s whereabouts. The fingernails know things ...
September 23, 2021
Danny Cooperflats hot sand and grainy glass yours is packed like clay me i grab some seashells and scrape to ...
June 29, 2021
Savannah Slonemanic / depressive i only exist in spectrum extremes floating amongst personality binaries hard cut offs........ prescription intimacy learning ...
June 29, 2021
Marsha BlitzerNITS The native mums told me it was inevitable, ..............................................................nobody’s fault. ....................In the changing room ..............................................................they swapped ....................uniform jumpers ...
June 29, 2021
Esther RaSHELTER Every evening before we climb into the car, I tap the hood politely, and wait for the street ...
June 29, 2021
Diana RickardSMALL CONSOLATION you make an offering to posterity ghastly aesthetic cauterizes the virile there is a corniness to the ...
June 29, 2021
Soheon RheePAPER MACHE ON THE DRAIN The day of Chuseok, I remember that you wanted to cut my dress and ...
March 29, 2021
Kate PetersonAT A CAFÉ IN VICTORIA, BC TWO GREY-HAIRED MEN TALK ABOUT LOVE She’s in the garden all the time ...
March 29, 2021
James MillerLAST GESTURE We eat on the porch when evening heat recedes. Lamps hang from the oak. The Conrad novel ...
March 29, 2021
Laura TanenbaumLITTLE GRIEF SONG, JULY 2020 “But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather ...
March 29, 2021
Valerie LovelandI AM THAT GROUP OF PICTURES OF SPIDERWEBS MADE BY SPIDERS ON DIFFERENT DRUGS Scientists call everything an experiment, ...
March 29, 2021
Ann de ForestAMMONITES mountains once were ocean evidence coils beneath our feet prehistoric curlicues not yet nautilus not yet snail ...
December 17, 2020
Anthony AgueroBEING WHOLE AFTER A DIAGNOSIS I. Diagnosis Someone likens your body to soured-meat, Flies swarming the thighs, a hint ...
December 17, 2020
Meggie RoyerTHE SECOND STEP That night, the door so waterlogged with rain it stuck for hours, hinges flush with the ...
December 17, 2020
Heikki HuotariAS TRANSPARENT AS IT GETS Just because you're parasailing doesn't mean this call's not coming ...
December 17, 2020
Amy Beth SissonDISSECTION After school my teacher helped me pull the pink downy breast feathers to clear the skin and ...
December 17, 2020
Peter WearHAVANA, ILLINOIS, AUGUST 2020 White clouds, so many white clouds pause above August’s green cornfields– an armada of triremes, ...
December 17, 2020
travis tateWHERE I WAIT FOR YOU The river before anything else, the glazed sun emerging gently from evening. You, brightly ...
September 29, 2020
Evan AndersSPEAKING OF SUNFLOWERS the world is bare bones an orphan after rage relinquishes her arrow. magnolias ago, sunflowers stormed ...
September 29, 2020
Chi Siegelmy lover starts seeing after a.b. yehoshua’s “facing the forests” my lover starts seeing our house as a forest. ...
September 29, 2020
THE PRICE OF HANDS by Brian Ellis You can try the gloves, but the gloves will work two hours tops ...
September 29, 2020
Music by Richard Casimir, "Antumbra" (poem) by Herman BeaversTHE ESPERANZA PROJECT In classical music, a fermata is a pause of ...
September 29, 2020
Rosemary KitchenFIELD NOTES FOR THE MAGICIAN: SLEIGHT OF HAND I. Mother teaches me to read the ages of bald women ...
September 29, 2020
Nicole GreaveEIDOLON She said there are some things you will always be, like Italian, some skills interchangeable: folding underwear and ...
June 29, 2020
Blindness It began with a stove, burnt mahogany dissipates in, wishing the ember hinted the future: mother running out of ...
June 29, 2020
Am I the only one in the Cleveland Art Museum today looking for mercy? I’m looking at an artwork about ...
June 29, 2020
hands the swaddled child over. A dream is no place for a baby. She has seen revelers pour the baby ...
June 29, 2020
out my window colored heads bound in swiftness. in their decision to bring about movement & motion. the snow is ...
March 29, 2020
SIX STAGES OF GRIEF I. you are going to a Danish pastry down on Jung-gu road to sell your soul ...
March 29, 2020
I have a mother who once said car, lake, who said, I couldn’t stand holding your sticky hands any longer, ...
March 29, 2020
The fiery fist above slowly loses its hold / and the musky lungs of autumn grow dry. At last, fall ...
March 29, 2020
He knew how it would be—should have.Forgetting the keys on the table, / doors locked, window’s open, returning / on ...
March 29, 2020
Today has dawned a nude beginning. The male truck idles at the curfew and the bruisepaper waits on the porch ...
March 29, 2020
Shouldn’t it let me buy everything and pay with negative interest? All those swirling golden stars teeming, unbalanced in the ...
December 29, 2019
IN SOME ALIEN PRAIRIE the birds don’t circle the ways they do here collected in one large cloud a ...
December 29, 2019
Jeremy RadinTWO POEMS Ode to the Nectarine O secretive sunrise of an armadillo, won’t you please uncurl for me? Of ...
December 29, 2019
He wakes back bent into a kind of platform for what is meant to be goodness ...
September 16, 2019
Chits came in stapled packets, five yellow slips to a page, that ripped like postage stamps, perforated. Three’d buy a ...
September 16, 2019
she scans a glossy creak lowland like wood floors creased with alluvial fans playas and alkali flats before sandy gravely ...
September 16, 2019
Dana FangLAST SUMMER AT SUMMERLAND I When she trimmed the holly, when she trellised each lilac, her knuckles were starchy ...
September 16, 2019
In one town, an apricot held in the mouth of a rabbit like a swollen tongue. In another, a pear ...
September 16, 2019
Poul Lynggaard DamgaardDEAR CITY I want to tell about the gap between houses and the way the windows are beyond ...
September 16, 2019
When you don’t know what to expect you’re almost always expecting something, even if you’re mistaken, as when you expect ...
September 16, 2019
I could be more perceptive. Beneath me, 750 ft., my wife is thinking. I fool no one. My sweater is ...
September 16, 2019
The white car that lives in the white of the eye comes out of the sun behind the line of ...
September 16, 2019
An animal, let’s say my dog, has issues with the end of the world. She’s lined the back porch in ...