Joseph Radke

@josephradke.com

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Re-emerging poet. None of my e's are silent! Poems in Copper Nickel, Bellevue Literary Review, Boulevard & Southeast Review (forthcoming) 📖 my work ⤵ www.josephradke.com

A block of text from a book. The last line in the paragraph is "Why is the bottom margin larger on this page?"
Screenshot of web news story: I now have all the sources I need. Let me verify the key URLs I’ll be using: [a list of urls from around the Internet]. All confirmed real from search results. Now I’ll write the article. Picture the smartest person you’ve ever worked with. Were they the loudest in the room? Did they fire off answers before you’d finished asking the question?
Celebrate the release of PRINTER’S FIST A new book of poems by Melissa Range Thursday, April 9th @ 7pm Wriston Gallery 613 E College Ave, Appleton, WI Reading, book signing & poetry fun for everyone. FREE TO ATTEND The poster is done in a variety of fonts in the style of a 19th century handbill. It features a picture of the author and “Printer’s Fists” (similar to the backhand pointing emojis)
BLOOD STAIN CHARE GRAPE GRAVE
Another Morning Poem With the sun a spot of yellow through the frosted window, I awoke not quite thrilled by the strangeness, like the day after a move. Just hours ago, the last hollow brick wall of grief collapsed, that levy of sadness burst. No telling how—unseen erosion, the hidden drip of chaos toward a tipping point, the wind that carries the weight of the straw that breaks everything eventually? And I won’t tell what it was about. You'd only say so little? or that again? I’ll just tell you I stood again, showered, got dressed. The kettle whistled. Breakfast tea steeped in something different, toast spread with jam. I walked outside and into something alive. The sun a spot of yellow through the frosted winter sky. Breath refusing to ghost, glasses unfogged. I was struck by the first real snow of January making good on a threat the sky held over us for weeks—flakes broken, melted, and frozen back in on themselves, hard so they sounded when they hit. It's true, and like so much that is true, almost completely meaningless.
The Same Dog I listen to the same dog every night though I never see it in the light. Neighbors deny it’s theirs or even hearing it. You know, I say, mostly after sundown, sometimes early morning? Part growl, part bark? No, they say, no idea what you’re talking about. Animal control no longer responds. On calm evenings, it seems a distant howl. In the storm, I hear its whine right under my window between crashes of thunder. Nights aren’t sleepless but I dream of nails pounding in irregular rhythms, horns on beasts that shouldn’t have horns, tails on people who shouldn’t have tails. Eyes everywhere. Then one night (around mid-summer when it never really gets dark, the light only dims and simmers): the barking, the growling, a whimper, silence.
The Cover of Southern Poetry Review featuring a black and white photo of the head and mane of a carousel horse titled Horse Through A Window by Brett Taylor.
Groceries. Beer. Liquor. Lottery. My date studies geography, but not boring geography, hot geography. The kind where they figure the ratio of Jesus to horses. There’s always a ratio. Jesus to horses. Highschools to Speedways. Liquor to lottery. All landscape makes me sad. There are always people picnicking near the pond at the end of the park, and all I can think is it’s too far to walk just to sit on a blanket. The people reading in chairs tire me too — How do they manage to be so relaxed? Does it require a lifetime of practice? — while the whiteness of vans in the sun echoes through the parking lot. Those lines in the lawn become wavy near the lot. As if to make a point. And yet, patterns are neither just plans nor just accidents. For instance, my brothers stole and stole and stole until every TV was a replacement for the one just used to buy smokes.
Sapphic Dream by Mag Gabbert (words at the end of lines are split between lines. For example, "hotel" is split between "hot" and "-el" we’ve made the hot -el room hum -id from our show -er you: lost in a sea -rch for me -teors as I was -h as -hore —unraveling hem -isphere, come -t, light as a ball -erina’s spin -e— once again im -mersed in the cove -rs, then on -ce again again -st our sin -k
WHEN YOUR BACKACHE RETURNS Joseph Radke The doctor, like a tour guide, pointed to your X-ray and described points of interest— the intervertebral space variability, features of the sagittal and coronal plane. Like a weatherman, he detailed the current conditions with broad hand gestures and scientific confidence— degrees of idiopathic curvature, the tilt of various vertebrae. He gave the prognosis like a forecast—no curvature progression, your spine a stationary front. He prescribes Ibuprofen, as much as you can tolerate, a heel lift for one shoe. All like he’s done this a thousand times before, which of course he has. We hide so much from one another, try to smooth out the imperfections and dress up our faults. Yet, there you were, the inside of you in the high-contrast black & white. I was shocked to see beyond what I could touch, what I liked so much, to the little twist, one source of your pain. That night, when the dull ache kept you awake, I touched the surface. Bellevue Literary Review, Issue 48 — Spring 2025
Cover of Bellevue Literary Review Issue 48 displaying Las Tralaveritas 2015 by Aliza Nisenbaum next to the text of the poem: WHEN YOUR BACKACHE RETURNS Joseph Radke The doctor, like a tour guide, pointed to your X-ray and described points of interest— the intervertebral space variability, features of the sagittal and coronal plane. Like a weatherman, he detailed the current conditions with broad hand gestures and scientific confidence— degrees of idiopathic curvature, the tilt of various vertebrae. He gave the prognosis like a forecast—no curvature progression, your spine a stationary front. He prescribes Ibuprofen, as much as you can tolerate, a heel lift for one shoe. All like he’s done this a thousand times before, which of course he has. We hide so much from one another, try to smooth out the imperfections and dress up our faults. Yet, there you were, the inside of you in the high-contrast black & white. I was shocked to see beyond what I could touch, what I liked so much, to the little twist, one source of your pain. That night, when the dull ache kept you awake, I touched the surface.
Trillium When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees thick with many lights. I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see. And as I watched, all the lights of heaven faded to make a single thing, a fire burning through the cool firs. Then it wasn’t possible any longer to stare at heaven and not be destroyed. Are there souls that need death’s presence, as I require protection? I think if I speak long enough I will answer that question, I will see whatever they see, a ladder reaching through the firs, whatever calls them to exchange their lives— Think what I understand already. I woke up ignorant in a forest; only a moment ago, I didn’t know my voice if one were given to me would be so full of grief, my sentences like cries strung together. I didn’t even know I felt grief until that word came, until I felt rain streaming from me.
Groom by Austin Segrest. Mustard yellow and brown cover. "Segrest... explores the line between damage and desire, affection and manipulation." Mark Wunderlich
Poster for reading 3/12/25 @ 6 PM at 918 N. Oneida Street, Appleton, WI
Poster with cute character walking their dog. Breathing Room Poetry Series. Joseph Radke, Grace Rebekah Wiersma, Walden Holden. 6pm March 12 918 N. Oneida Street, Appleton, WI Sponsored by fsm and Only Child
In Those Years Adrienne Rich In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I