Abby Zimet: Those Pesky Socialists Claiming There’s Anybody Here But White Men
The supposed dangers of truth-telling about history, even when we aren’t the good guys, is bedrock right-wing rubbish, because of course the truth can be a pain and then you have to learn, change, do better and ewww, who wants to do that?
Meg Pokrass: Moments with Crochet Hooks
Back then she and her mother waited for the phone to ring, for money to plump itself up and walk through their door. Moments passed with yarn and crochet hooks.
Rick Campbell: Another List of Things I Have Attended to Sloppily
The garden gates, once my pride, now
slanted, ajar, hinges rusted and failing.
The rails of Della’s tree house
that somehow escaped their nails.
Michael Simms: Only You
I woke this morning remembering the room we had in Paris which looked out on the Seine.
Abby Zimet: Planet Earth To Outer Space, When Bezos Blasts Off, Please Keep Him There
With enough money to end world hunger or curb climate change or house the homeless but evidently little will to do so, the founder of the dystopian empire of Amazon and the world’s second-richest man with an estimated $186 billion is instead taking an insouciant space ride…
Molly Fisk: Phil, Who Loved the Giants
The bra I took off at 4:45 through the sleeve of my dress
and put down somewhere I find on my grandmother’s hutch
in the kitchen, incongruous, surrounded by jars of jam
Jose Padua: Head Over Heels
At the doctor’s office in Charlottesville, Virginia
to investigate the possible reasons
for my ten-month-old son’s large head,
the doctor measures my own
and informs me that my head size
is off the curve, off the charts
Molly Fisk: You and I
the whole country snarled into such a hot mess
you wouldn’t recognize democracy if she
removed her skirts and danced on your lap for free,
pretending to like you.
Stephen Dobyns: The Miracle of Birth
As they joylessly wait for reassignment,
they dangle their feet into the blue abyss at the brink
of heaven like boys on a wall bumping their sneakers
on the bricks below.
Jose Padua: Directions in Music and Other Ways of Approaching the Day
what he wants to do
sounds better than
what I want to do
we sit in the car
and listen
until the song is over
Meg Pokrass & Jeff Friedman: Wig
The wig arrived in a pretty pink box. I’d ordered it online from a wig shop. Silky, blonde and long, it felt as if I were entertaining a movie star in my hallway. Grace Kelly in a box on my couch. So nice to meet you, I said, slipping it on.
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?
