New Orleans Review

Since 1968

Poetry

Don’t bury the dead

47, Poetry by Bernardo Wade

I’ve been                         broken
                 boy turned                  to drink
left to rust                                 family-damp
       with prayer                      I wish
             he would just                                stop
digging in
            graveyards.
We don’t bury                                   the dead.
               We remember   the sky
likes to fall
                       down the throat.
               We call it            
…

My Brother Calls

47, Poetry by Maari Carter

to let me know Sonic
is including gravy 
in their chicken strips dinner again.

He asks when I’m coming home 
for Thanksgiving. We don’t

speak often. Having not been raised 
in the same house, little has passed
between us— no …

The Hostages

47, Poetry by Ashley Crout

It was you or your house that dead-ended the road
and fitted my living in until I could nothing 
but survive amidst the furniture, the clothes 
the drawers closed in that blocked my body

from the vicious in you, from …

Behind Beauty

47, Poetry by Amanda Gaines

There’s a little purple space cadet,
folding a cease & desist into a fortuneteller.
She isn’t worried about the asteroid lightyears away 
or the screaming crew she forgot to release 
from timeout. According to her calculations, 
she’s got nothing to …

The Rainy Season

46, Poetry by Anne Barngrover

raises up animals from their water houses:
            birds like wet laundry, alligators close enough to appear
long-lashed and serene, Florida chicken turtle

            bundled in the apartment parking lot
as though delivered by drone.

…

Dad’s Bathrobe

46, Poetry by Cammy Thomas

for summer blue and white seersucker

          my sister froze when she saw me in it
I took it when he died and I’ve washed it

          because of how he liked to beat us
a thousand times it’s ankle-length …