Lasse Söderberg: For Tomas Tranströmer
You know the broken history of things,
the alchemy of stones, a world masked
in the blind light of God.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Infinitives
To dust it — not often enough. To stare at it — too often.
To never open it anymore. Keep his ashes hidden.
Barbara Hamby: Letter to a Lost Friend
There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened
between us, like ostyt, which can be used
for a cup of tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room,
and return, it is too cool
Michael Simms: The Horses
People loved her as they might love
A flag or a map or a story
Of a country of green pastures
And low stone walls
Baron Wormser: The Shuffle
Lost my soul in the shuffle.
Got a self instead.
Not a fair deal, not even-Steven,
Not Roger-dodger.
John Balaban: Anna Akhmatova Spends the Night on Miami Beach
What killed her was the talk, the empty eyes,
which made her long for the one person in ten thousand
who could say her name, who could take her home,
giving her a place between Auden and Apollinaire
Barbara Hamby: Ode on Dictionaries
A-bomb is how it begins with a big bang on page
one, a calculator of sorts whose centrifuge
begets bedouin, bamboozle, breakdance, and berserk,
one of my mother’s favorite words, hard knock
clerk of clichés that she is
Michael Simms: You Taught Me
you pointed
At the bubbles rising in the pitcher
Of beer to explain consciousness
Which was blurred by that time
Of evening
Baron Wormser: Oona
When you have a dog, you get to participate in another creature’s being, a creature who wants to be with you, a human being.
Terry Blackhawk: So Here
So here I’ve gone and reframed your painting, the one of the street with its tilted telephone poles, the street that led me into sleep so often now bordered by an eggplant purple, very trendy and advised by the decorator to pick up the purples and greens of other pieces in my room…
Video: Jane Hirshfield reads “For What Binds Us” (with text included)
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud
Baron Wormser: Ghosts
All the chatter about “family values” presupposes that women pick up whatever difficulties they are faced with and go forward with a happy, maternal smile. Seduced and abandoned does not exist in such an aggressively wholesome universe.
Sandy Solomon: Abortion Clinic
Pregnant, but unclear about her last period,
she said she thought nothing was wrong for weeks,
but knew she couldn’t afford another, couldn’t
afford the five kids she had now
Baron Wormser: Conspiracy and Character
Not so strangely, the events of January 6 have a Roman cast to them as a vengeful, self-styled emperor urges the plebeians to attack the Capitol
Vox Populi 