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?
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
