In Conversation

In Conversation, a literary arts journal, is now accepting general submissions.

It’s Springtime for Donald by R.M. Engelhardt

It’s Springtime for Donald How sad Truly     sad Your life must be To play the villain The monster on Reality TV While children are being Born, and the elderly are dying and Another mother can’t afford the rent And a family who Just lost their home But what do you care? As all the …

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THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER: The Thomas Jefferson of the Pell Grant Elites by Karl Koweski

The Thomas Jefferson of the Pell Grant Elites   For a brief period, I was a community college scholar. This should come as no surprise to anyone who knew me as a fifth-grade genius. During the intervening years, I may have fallen off the educational map. Spectacularly some would say, through my year as an …

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3 poems by Todd Cirillo

Promise We had the rings picked out. She promised me, you will never be that lonely again. Ever. Emphasizing that final word. EVER. I think of her promise as I sit here listening to her voicemails over and over. The only thing left to keep me company now. Plate Tectonics I watched a documentary on …

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2 poems by Tony Brewer

Blurb for my blurbs Tony Brewer’s blurb for my chapbook is like an earnest comment on a fetish site for em dash fanciers. He took me seriously — and I don’t take anything seriously. Everything is spelled correctly and probably proofread, I can’t tell. He gets weird around the middle. Punctuation: extensive!; — pulling out. …

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2 poems by M.J. Arcangelini

SANTA BARBARA, CA (1973) I was dropped off where the freeway ends, the guy had to go well out of his way to find an empty spot to let me out. For about a mile long stretch 101 became a palm lined boulevard crowded during the summer months with block after block of despair, an …

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Another Fucking Poem by Dan Flore III

ANOTHER FUCKING POEM I picked up the zine and was exhausted by the poetry so I skipped over it another fucking poem I thought my mind was too out of breath to read any poetry no wonder it takes so long to hear back from editors Dan Flore III’s writings have appeared in many publications. …

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3 poems by Ted Jackins

People You See At Funerals The thing no One prepares you For Is the loneliness Of adulthood, As friends scatter Like ashes in The wind, Meeting once every Year or so At wakes or Weddings, And that friendship Sits on a shelf In the back Of a closet Like your best Funeral/wedding suit, A little …

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2 poems by Alan Catlin

Put Your Lights On when you need me, her main man had said, a hot spot burned into her bed where they had lain, covers pulled back, just the two of them spent & lazy, all their dead banished to the desert, even after moon rise, even after their shadows could be seen as desolation …

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Eat the Rich by Leah Mueller

Eat the Rich My mother always said “He thinks his shit doesn’t stink” and I thought about her words dozens of times, wondering if a posh guy stood above his toilet, smiling with satisfaction as he thought, “Why, my shit has no stench at all. In fact, it smells intoxicating.” Perhaps he lingered for a …

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Rabbit Season by Hiromi Yoshida

Rabbit Season   Rabbits scamper across gravel and grass, dodging beneath expensive SUVs, hoping not to get hit, and flattened out on asphalt roads like hairy pancakes sizzling in 90° F heat—   rabbit after rabbit appearing (then disappearing) to the invisible chorus of raucous birds. “They all look the same,” the birds squawk (like …

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