Fleur Adcock: Happy Ending
After they had not made love
she pulled the sheet up over her eyes
until he was buttoning his shirt:
not shyness for their bodies – those
they had willingly displayed – but a frail
endeavor to apologise.
Jan Beatty: My Father’s Houses
My father stands lean and young
in the formica kitchen, drinking a shot of Imperial.
He shoots his head back/swallows it all/
slams down the shot glass/turns around and says:
That’s good stuff.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Nostalgia
Nostalgias we share with friends
around a good table, nodding yes, yes, to our
glad sadnesses as we bring back a taste, a kiss,
that one song we will never forget.
Jianqing Zheng: Site Visit
The Valley Store in Avalon, Mississippi, long abandoned, still holds its worn-out sign above the locked double doors. Many years ago, John Hurt lived nearby.
Mary B. Moore: Ab Ovum
could say anything’s inside me, Gloria, Dad, Mom,
the old Royal typewriter, Xs, Ys, a blue ’58 Hudson . . .
but I Wiki-checked the car and learn they quit making them
in ’57 so then I wonder if I mean the Hudson River
Baron Wormser: The Hero
Amid Donald Trump’s hubbub machine, it may be hard to discern that what is happening is not a rogue event but one that is ingrained in the American character…
Donna Hilbert: Three Poems
It’s the walkers I wonder about:
sad faces, our caps pulled down, moving fast,
no place special to go, so fierce to get there.
Sean Sexton: Semen Testing the Herd Bulls
We push them in trios
and quartets—bellowing down the lane
—a rider betwixt to stage them
strategically in the pens. Once
arrived, the usual upstart gets thrown
through a fence.
Barbara Hamby: Hatred
Abracadabra, says Mephisto, the fire fly
buddha of Rue Morgue, and the whole wide world
changes from a stumbling rick-rack machine
doing the rag time, the bag time, the I’m-on-the
edge-of-a-drag time to a tornado of unmitigated
fury.
Michael Simms: Jude the Obscure, Forgiveness
I wish Lea could see this light
lowering itself gently into the arms
of the Aphrodite sweet shrub
and tangling itself in the thorns
of Jude the Obscure named for
the many petals of our sins against others.
Zeina Azzam: My love, how can I contact you? حبيبي، كيف بدي اتصل فيك؟
They handcuffed him, didn’t listen when he’d speak,
callously severing him from his home
as his wife cried, حبيبي، كيف بدي اتصل فيك؟
Judson Mitcham: Poison
But it’s too late now. We are riding in his car,
and he’s three sheets to the nuclear wind,
he’s roaring drunk on the con that he ran
to put us where we are
Jennifer L Freed: Lessons
if you were that woman, then you, too,
would ask for repetition of bag and back and bank,
of leave and leaf and left and live
Robert Wrigley: A Certain Man
For in the loop of this hell there’s a farcical rule,
that says when certain men find a certain man
of use—one that’s spiteful, vacant, and cruel —
he becomes for his purposes the perfect tool…
