Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

A SCRAP OF FOUND PARCHMENT (TO AN ATHENIAN SWIMMER)

by Jenna Le


Ryan Lochte explains how a Trojan wall ran into his chariot.

Do you believe you deserve your leisure, drunk spraddle-legged
boy? Did you earn it under the walls of Troy?

You boast that laurel wreathes your brow, but neglect to mention
windblown leaves are piled high
on the juncture of your thighs. Well, if one spends enough time outdoors,
plant life isn’t hard to come by.


Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Anchor & Plume Press, 2016). Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations appear or are forthcoming in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Best of the Raintown Review, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, The Village Voice, and elsewhere.