Mimesis is a new international poetry journal. We are interested in publishing the most exciting poems currently being written, by big and small names alike.

The mimesis website is up. Check it out.

Want to support contemporary poetry both here on dA and elsewhere? Please do pre-order a copy of issue 1. I can assure you the poetry in it is damn fine.

Want to see your own work (poetry, b/w illustrations, poetry-related articles) in print? Feel free to submit some work. Take a look at the submissions page on the site. Accepted contributors receive a free copy of the mag.

Any mention of mimesis in journals or wherever you can is much appreciated. The mag is a labour of love, and as such we need everything we can get to just stay afloat.






Issue 1 contains:


--48 Poems from:

Julie Carter, Brent Fisk, Rebecca Kutzer-rice (~musical-nymph), Jee Leong Koh, Taylor Loy (~TheHungerArtist), Rob Mackenzie, Ian McLachlan (*venturus), Jon Stone (*jack-cade), R. L. Swihart and Emily Stuart (~WhoKilledKirov).

--Also: an interview with poet Michael Laskey .

--Artwork from:

Jesse Michael Renaud (`frail) (cover), Amanda Rehagen (`saintartaud) and Sarah Hayes (*thepurplemonster).



Some sample poems (there are more on the mimesis website):


Fork by Julie Carter

He’d wake me, call my name from the doorway
so quietly that he could claim to Mom
I wasn’t sleeping. I’d creep to him and we’d
creep together down to the porch, stare out
at the blue bolting lightning, the roiled sky.

I’ve never asked the others if they had
their own slipdark nights, their own incantations
one hippopotamus two hippopotamus three
before the thunder banged out its reply. I never
wondered why my father and I could share that
deep calm love of turbulence, of the air
sparking up to meet the stars.

Now I fear the roof, fear an ungrown tree,
fear the weathermen in their unholy cheer
at something struck, split, toppled, something
catching limbsful of sudden fire, one Mississippi
two Mississippi, shake shake shake the world.



Alabama by Emily Stuart (~WhoKilledKirov)

Backwoods and blackwater man
scum’d up from the blue eyed
ruddy faced brethren of McClendens;
gone to sitting on firewood piles
to rival fort Opelika.

With eight barrels sprouting akimbo
from cross armed and breeched brothers
lining up kiddy cans for the little cousins
on Pa’s side, and coke bottles with swan necks
for that backwoods man.

He paced the earth
down soft and flat with a sooty
shoe toe and tucked it away
in the stomach flesh, folded by the belt
and pulled tight like a drum
on bone strings. He hid away
that word, unsaid,
and stumped that ground
with a sooty shoe toe
and cracked that bottle with a bullet.

This set those little ones, homegrown
haircuts over wide wrinkled brow,
spinning like Ferris wheels
and holding peels of glass
like matchstick-heroes in the dark;
yelping and squawking
like a bill-beaten mallard
on a swift downstream swim.

Backwoods and blackwater man scum’d up
from Alabama white poverty lines
swung his shotgun like he meant to strike sky
and scattered every child to the west
with a clatter of moccasin footsteps
and waggle-tongues claiming
a giant lives in the trees, a giant
with bull’s-eye aim.
He lolled in the brush with a big
mean grin and made a click clack
with a stick and his teeth
watching a doe pee herself
in the grass, ears cocked back.

He hid away
that word, unsaid,
and he paced the earth
down soft and flat with a sooty
shoe toe,
and he cracked her skull with a bullet.



The Hyenas by Ian McLachlan (*venturus)

I found them chewing on a corpse.
They wouldn’t say who’d killed it.
Hyenas are commonly noisy.
The noise to smother the shame.

They tell me how they like to live.
They do not lie all of the time.
Their oral tradition goes unchallenged.
Cannibalism never mentioned.

I do some sketches of them.
They don’t recognise themselves.
One of them puts his hands on his head.
Another grows depressed.

They hate and love each other
for imposing this form on themselves.
In sunlight, what they don’t notice,
their shadows are those of men.