Issue > Poetry

Mike Puican

Mike Puican has had poems in Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry and Bloomsbury Review, among others. His poetry reviews have appeared in Cerise Press, Another Chicago Magazine, Kenyon Review and TriQuarterly Online. Mike was a member of the 1996 Chicago Slam Team and is currently board president of the Guild Literary Complex in Chicago.

Not A Just World But A Lavish One

A green river bells and
comes into hue, a blues
riff slices the dusk, crows
caw from a trash barge
offshore, a kick drum
punches out Love,
Baby, Love. A shirt falls
to the kitchen floor.

God does not speak
with consistency, why
should we? Mourning doves
outside your open window;
Who's Got the Hooch?
from the house
band next door; coriander,
fines herbes and your face
in the chrome toaster.