Rita Sims Quillen: Sugar-n-Spice, Etc.
Once we sneaked out of a slumber party
tiptoed onto an icy bridge
still in our babydoll pajamas and
froze our prissy asses off
John Clare: To John Clare
Well, honest John, how fare you now at home?
Judith Sanders: The Rubber Woman
I have a thousand uses:
crash dummy, sex toy, punching bag, life raft.
Ellen McGrath Smith: On Being a Late-Night Motion Detector Detector
Two tiny yellow eyes stared back at me from the shadows near the shed. This has happened with my dog and with my cats, but I had never experienced this with a rat.
Jeffrey Harrison: The Mount
the blue-jeaned ass of the one on top
moving up and down, pelvis cramming
noiselessly into the rump of the one
underneath, whose vacant eye
caught mine for an instant as I walked past
James Joyce: Thus the Unfacts
Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday.
Matt Hohner: Where Are You Sending Your Poems This Week?
I’m sending my poems to reform school.
To prison. To the front lines. Straight to hell
on a one-way ticket.
Gerry LaFemina: Security
My carry-on flagged for protein
bars that might be plastique, & I failed
the swab test, some residue battery acid
or fertilizer on my fingertips.
Paul Hostovsky: Wincing at the Beautiful
So my friend Phil is telling me how
he can’t get a date
how he loves women and how
they’re always giving him looks
so I ask him what kind of looks
Video: Thirsty Kevin’s Big Date
Kevin goes on his first date in 20 years, but makes one disastrous mistake.
Kenneth Fearing: LOVE, 20 Cents The First Quarter Mile
I forgive you for being beautiful and generous and wise.
I forgive you, to put it simply, for being alive, and pardon you, in short, for being you.
BJ Ward: In Memoriam | The Victims of the Bowling Green Massacre
Here’s to the blood that wasn’t shed,
That still courses through hearts and
untroubled heads—
Marina Tsvetaeva: Thank God for the Rich
For their root, putrid and loose,
For their weeping-wound from the cradle,
For their perplexing habit of taking
More from my pocket into their pocket.
