Issue 2.1
Note: for the best reading experience of ballast, we highly recommend viewing the journal on a desktop or laptop computer. If reading on a smartphone, the original formatting of the texts may be altered or lost.
“I’m Supposed to Be Writing a Nature Poem”
“spilanthes americana"“
“The Sweetest Tone”
”How We Live Now”
“Comfort” [Translation of Rita Kogan]
“[mentholated cigarette]”
“[killer is revealed]”
“Mr. Keillor’s Sermon at Lake Woebegon”
“In a Hole in the Ground”
“in the belly of god”
“Still Life with the Blind Girl”
“The Catalog of Natural Still-Life”
“[Captain, the barnacle markets demand men]”
“[Provide an explanation for her silence]”
“An Elegy for Middle America”
“Rainstorm and Angel Over the Rio Grande”
“NBC's A Visit with Carl Sandburg, 1958”
“Stale Double Stuf Oreo, 1974”
“licorice”
“Prophelactic”
“Breathtaking”
“Song for the First Hard Rain of Spring”
“Guide to Interpreting Dreams II”
“Proust Questionnaire (#11-20)”
”like handwriting”
“making things tidy”
“Oracle for my hip”
“saltmouth”
“Fugu Liver in the Afterlife”
“Father; Ghost-Example”
“Catalogue”
“The Man on TV”
“"Sonnet in search of Francesco Petrarca, by way of Wyatt and Surrey"
"Two sonnets in memory of George Oppen"
"On the ideology of the sonnet and the sonnet sequence considered as languages, or, that Man [sic] as a rhizomatic animal desires those multiplicities which are his (im)perfection"
“Against Tenderness”
“Things that are useless”
Yáng Wǎn (trans. Carolanna Lisonbee):
“Sorrowful Spring”
“An Engine That Works”
Dialogues — two poets in conversation
Reviews — poets reading others
cover image provided by Jerome Berglund
“[mentholated cigarette]”