Size / / /

I think about a bumper sticker I once saw:

"Picture Whirled Peas."

Perhaps I am to think of an ocean

of green legumes joining hands;

this is hard to do,

so let's start small.

I'll visualize instead pea soup shoved out of a can,

no water added yet,

clinging together en masse

as it stands upright in the microwave bowl,

waiting for me to add tapwater

and three minutes of electromagnetic flux.

Now I'm ready to start seeing the world:

a blue green portion of space,

turning on its slightly askew axis

as it tries to come together

in some sort of unified mix

of greenery, gravity, and water.

There, I've got it,

something also like stone soup:

enough to magically feed

all its creatures and renew itself.

No harder to picture, really,

than the whole mystery

of why we're on this ride to begin with,

clinging to a stone in space.




Duane Ackerson's poetry has appeared in Rolling Stone, Yankee, Prairie Schooner, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Cloudbank, alba, Starline, Dreams & Nightmares, and several hundred other places. He has won two Rhysling awards and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Salem, Oregon. You can find more of his work in our archives.
Current Issue
8 Jun 2026

But I am no king, no man. It is a role I assumed in serving, with perfect order, those who scarcely saw fit to name me. Wild and shimmering, I hide from myself no longer. I was born twice from death. It is time to mend what was broken, even if they will not.
i am learning my new friend’s language / she said do you want to look for frogs sometime
They took the verse... and translated its grief into a new alphabet.
Friday: Hermits Die on Thursday: Stories of Appalachia and the Dark Ages by Gregory Ariail 
Issue 1 Jun 2026
Issue 25 May 2026
By: Louis Inglis Hall
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 18 May 2026
Issue 11 May 2026
Issue 4 May 2026
Issue 20 Apr 2026
By: Athar Fikry
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Apr 2026
Issue 6 Apr 2026
Issue 30 Mar 2026
Issue 23 Mar 2026
Load More