Word For/Word: A Journal of New Writing

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Word For/Word: A Journal of New Writing

www.wordforword.info Word For/ Word is published biannually.

Word For/ Word publishes all types of poetry, prose and visual art, but prefers innovative and post-avant work with an astute awareness of the materials, rhythms, trajectories and emerging forms of the contemporary.

04/27/2025

I’m pleased to announce that issue 44 of Word For/Word is now online at www.wordforword.info/vol44. It features some terrific new poetry, visual art, and prose. I hope you check it out!

Here is an excerpt from the new issue:

“Roll On Bright Home,” by Claire Crowther

This morning I evicted my house.
I served it notice
through the kitchen door

and wandered away to the High Street.
A crystal shop shone
with bowls of bright gems.

If I had seen my grey cave lighten,
become a geode
prickling with rose quartz,

if I had thought bricks could radiate
gleams of tourmaline –
it wouldn’t be homeless.

Then juddering up the street, subjected,
tied to a lorry,
trembled my ex-house.

It passed me. Police cars screamed as I touched
my wall, my blind shell.
How it rocked, rocked, rocked.

Home is not ground-set, I know that now.
It keeps me. I will
ride my home always,

my dull pale pebble enclosing
emerald moss-agate
and obsidian

in its violet heart. It dances.
Home beyond boundary,
I will go with you.

09/22/2024

I’m pleased to announce that issue 43 of Word For/Word is now online at wordforword.info/vol43. It features some terrific new poetry and visual art. I hope you check it out!

Here are two excerpts from the new issue. One is a visual poem by John M. Bennet, and the other is a sonnet by David Hadbawnik.

David Hadbawnik, from 5 Sonnets

How old are you? I want to ask each soul
I meet – my son, though only five is old
beyond his years – an old, old man sometimes
it seems, bent over, hollow-cheeked, owl-eyed,
my wife a girl giggling behind her hands—
and me – and you – who’ll play this part – the voice
low and husky – I am every age I’ll
ever be, I could lie down right here and
begin again to babble, to gurgle
out my dying breath with a hand on my
shoulder that is my dad’s, the weird high keen
of my mom gleaming inside me and all we
contain of each other in each other
rippling inwards and outwards

08/02/2024

Word For/Word issue 43 will be available in September. Here are a couple of previews of the upcoming issue: a poem called “Lineage,” by Megan Breiseth, and a visual poem called “La Ola” by Diana Magallón. If you haven’t already, you can check out the current issue, #42, at wordforword.info/vol42 while you wait for issue 43. I hope you'll take a look!

Lineage, by Megan Breiseth

I fear I’ll go soft
when I catch what I chase
so I hedgehog my heart

stay super busy
while tentacles delve its cracks
trained to read threats all day

my hands are soft
on the eggs they crack
soon the moon will be new and gone

my witch writes my whole back
in a twist her tempo
my measure my homebody frantic

her space her hunger
left nest in my birdbrain
my witch my panic

my crackle from tissue
this perch on a roof
old claws and birdface

I swallow my question
the stone in my throat
speaks in relief

04/11/2024

I’m pleased to announce that issue 42 of Word For/Word is now online at wordforword.info/vol42. It features some terrific new poetry, visual art, and essays. I hope you check it out!

Here is an excerpt from the new issue:

from A Theory of Paper, by Steven Salmoni

p is a vessel of the world, but q asks how its passage might have reached the world.

The letters formed the universe to follow what their book would not contain. What letter, then, is the mark of any that have ever been?

“Let us remember” is not a sign of letters, but only their circumstance, their conjunction.

It’s the impression one gets, when one explains the letter, in order to read the letter.

Look at how you dream, enraptured in the flow of the opened room. Where it was a matter, against the matter of the “are you here,”

the line, brushed, spontaneous, hoping to establish some ground where we might claim some answers, where such answers might be sustained.

Implicit in what follows, the space that follows,

if only at that moment, will suffice. I am thinking of a situation. Answers must come, no matter that the answer will become us.

03/08/2024

Word For/Word issue 42 will be available later this month. Here are a couple of previews of the upcoming issue: a poem called “Catalog of Endangered Languages,” by Judy Halebsky, and a visual poem called “Asemic Turns Into Language” by Dario Roberto Dioli. If you haven’t already, you can also check out issue 41 at wordforword.info/vol41 while you wait for issue 42.

“Catalog of Endangered Languages,” by Judy Halebsky

Jojo’s shiny helium balloon floats up and over the playground. she wants us to get it back. I tell her the story my mother told me: the balloon will come down miles from here on a farm where there’s a kid who doesn’t have any toys and that kid will play with the balloon. how young is the youngest native speaker? who do they have to speak to? my grandmother’s words will not float up and land elsewhere. they will not repopulate or be reclaimed. there’s a fence around the playground but for a balloon, it’s about the wind (see: listing, delisting, and who changed their name and when)

10/08/2023

I’m pleased to announce that issue 41 of Word For/Word is now online at www.wordforword.info/vol41. It features some terrific new poetry, visual art, and essays. I hope you check it out!

Here is an excerpt from the new issue:

“circle,” by Gary Sloboda

we counted eleven spiders in the kitchen. damaged by the rains. it will take time to cross the flooded river. pursing its lips at our feet. which is the future we want to take solace in. and not have to regret our rags. but yesterday’s stains wash into last year’s. and a spider in the picture frame window sucks the essence of the dragonfly. it won’t take too long. when she finally gets her mouth to work the words. the supplicant asks, what is time? the monk says, it’s nothing.

09/02/2023

Issue #41 of Word For/Word is scheduled for publication later this month. In the meantime, here is a sneak peek of the issue: a poem (“Submarine Missive,” by Mary Ann Dimand), and a visual piece (“Oazjis,” by Michael Basinski). And if you haven’t already checked out the terrific writers and artists in the current issue ( #40), you can do so at www.wordforword.info

*

“Submarine Missive,” by Mary Ann Dimand

If I didn’t believe
in the souls of oysters,
I would think
they were messages
sent by ocean. Saying:
kiss of seafoam, flex
of muscle that had held
against the tugs of sea stars.
A message so secret
I would pop it in my mouth
though I would have to
leave the nacred wrapper
to be studied, maybe solved.

04/01/2023

I’m pleased to announce that issue 40 of Word For/Word is now online at www.wordforword.info/vol40. It features some terrific new poetry, visual art, and essays. I hope you check it out!

Here is an excerpt from the new issue:

“Comic Gloom,” by Mark DuCharme

Tell me a shadow. Winter’s not still—
I’ll harbor the moon in my getaway.
The town hall shuttered its wild gardens,
All destiny pending in a dreamed-up surprise.
Think the imperative ’til singing’s foundational
To wretched foragers who sulk &
Rumble in dark lots, thrusting
Pennies in their ears.
Save a fist for the ancient strangler—
I’ll batten down night’s cold edges with a starry
Twirl. Don’t simper, lest you be fed daisies
’Til the end of the wind’s on the line.

03/03/2023

Issue #40 of Word For/Word is scheduled for publication later this month. In the meantime, here is a sneak peek of issue 40: a poem ("Orphans in a Dormant Sky," by Connor Fisher ), and a visual piece (“Senza Virgole," by Angela Caporaso). If you haven’t already checked out the current issue, you can do so at www.wordforword.info.

"Orphans in a Dormant Sky," by Connor Fisher

That blackened winter, my I became a restless vision
At school, I shrouded my chariots in a contemptuous cloak

My mumbled phrases were the orphans of an abandoned tongue
They would have thrived as the stewards of a punishing armada

At school, I shrouded my chariots in a contemptuous cloak
Perhaps my I is a restless scapegoat, buffeted by zephyrs

They would have thrived as the stewards of a punishing armada
I think you are an abbreviated mirror in the body of a baron

Perhaps my I is a restless scapegoat, buffeted by zephyrs
And my daughter is a poet of the commercial still-life

I think you are an abbreviated mirror in the body of a baron
The way a stream runs downhill until it joins the moon

And my daughter is a poet of the commercial still-life
So I learned to bicker with an impregnable wall of canvas

The way a stream runs downhill until it joins the moon
That blackened winter, my I became a restless vision

So I learned to bicker with an impregnable wall of canvas
My mumbled phrases were the orphans of an abandoned tongue

09/04/2022

I’m pleased to announce that issue 39 of Word For/Word is now online at www.wordforword.info/vol39. It features some terrific new poetry, visual art, and essays. I hope you check it out!

Here is an excerpt from the new issue:

“Never Buy a Goldfish Together,” by Holly Day

I’m going to leave them a note when I go, tell them
I’m gonna be a hobo from now on, I’m taking my goldfish
got my clothes wrapped in a ball and hanging from a stick,
fishbowl carefully tucked under my arm, Lucky’s gonna be fine.

I’m gonna ride the rails from now on, like those old guys I used to see
hobbling around Dodge City when I was a kid, sleeping in the park
with their three-legged dogs except I’ve got a fish, a fish and a dream
and we’re going to go everywhere, we’re going to see everything.

I imagine my husband’s really going to miss Lucky
especially since he’s the one who named him.
I never figured out why we bought a goldfish in the first place
but now that I’m leaving, I can’t stand to leave Lucky behind.

08/13/2022

Issue #39 of Word For/Word is scheduled for publication later this summer. In the meantime, here is a sneak peek of the upcoming issue: a poem (from “The Captain Discovers a New Continent”, by Jason Fraley), and a visual piece (“untitled”, by Nora Free-Mather). And if you haven’t already checked out the current issue, you can do so at www.wordforword.info.

*

from “The Captain Discovers a New Continent,”by Jason Fraley

The captain pushes the throttle forward. Gulls circle and squawk in celebration. Gulls stretch their wings and discuss the length of her journey. The captain’s unbrushed teeth are dulled with film. Another option: gulls share their forefather’s stories about teeth, before fattening themselves on finger-shorn bread. The captain reaches the harbor’s threshold. Gulls turn back from the tugboat, the sharp-toothed whitecaps, the ocean eager to fill their mouths full regardless of whether they are ready.

02/02/2022

I am pleased to announce that issue 38 of Word For/Word is now online at www.wordforword.info/vol38. It features some terrific new poetry, visual art, and essays. I am also happy to note that this issue marks the twentieth anniversary of Word/For Word. I hope you check it out!

Here is an excerpt from the new issue:

“A Better Name for Fall” by Caroline Maun

Almost. Inflorescence before complete
darkness. Preemptive nostalgia.
Those shadows that show you how
long a spirit might stretch. Radical change
that doesn’t ask first for your support.
Rather than talk to me about the past,
my father left clippings, each one a mention
of some blood relative I would never meet.
Yellowed newsprint, small stories
of who was wed, who died,
who went to war, who was left. Mystery
in the way leaves, overwintered,
become shelter for a different form of life.

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