Author: rivervoltareview

A crack in the dam of late-winter sky, light syrups the field, deer-hide blonde, last year’s crop, legumes, rich tilth, grainy snow. Soon, the furred petals of crocus. Soon, the meadowlark’s ostinato, Cattail gauze, blown poplar seed, sun in a woman’s silk blouse. You want to walk after a season of sleep. And I remember [...]

Jameson has seven guitars. What’s that like? How does he pick which to finger late nights alone on his balcony? The fireflies tumbling by after midnight in July they help him compose as they circle erratically, chord after chord, until an ember settles, a trembling clef on the frets of his Blueridge acoustic, silencing his [...]

The night wasn’t quiet, but it was peaceful. The moon had just begun to peek above the horizon, the start of its slow drift across the deep blue of the heavens. Its round border was solid and very nearly full, a promise of good light in the cloudless night sky. Stars winked furtively [...]

In the darkness, the white noise of political feuding can be heard: border disputes, missile tests, religious banter about the end of the world. As the lights come up, a WOMAN in a white dress sits at a table. On a nearby corner table sits a digital clock; the display reads 11:13. As she sets [...]

You are Daffy Duck’s scary cousin you inhabit the littoral zones of the lake where you and I compete for the fish you inhabit our nights   our drifting sleep oily greenblack head and coalblack beak surfaces beside our canoe like a submarine at the yacht club oh for a beak like that you swim huge [...]

On his Instagram, figure skater Patrick Chan poses with a dog. I don’t think it’s his dog, but it’s a dog nonetheless. I think Patrick Chan is the kind of man who looks sideways at everything first to make sure but also the kind of man who indulges in emojis. I think Patrick Chan wakes [...]

It plays like a Tarantino film: establishing shot of the long gravel road, dust spiraling, blue-sky hawk soaring above a car in the distance. Tighten to a close-up of the car’s velour seat covers, ashtray overflowing, coffee cups perched on dashboard. The soundtrack bursts through the speakers, funkytime bass blending of hiphop, rap, techno. Cut [...]

Often people who are not poets, and even some poets, think of poetry as entirely a short form—one page and you are done. Then there is another page. And another. Poetry can be this. But I would like to explore the way poetry may present itself as poetry “systems” spreading themselves, drifting through a number [...]