Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Estate Sale
The day grew hot; the yard
held the heat until the late shade
gathered it. Deep in shadow
the ghosts convened
Barbara Crooker: Who Do You Carry?
On city streets, the homeless unfurl
their sleeping bags like hungry tongues.
Michael Simms: Waterfall
In Chatham Woods near our house
a spring bursts
from a hillside and falls
into a rocky pool
Lynne Thompson: In this version, a teardrop
Tell them, tear, you are finished and
they should chuckle like old men who
stand between stanzas and a widow’s
Social Security check.
Chard deNiord: Songbirds Fly North at Night
I’m flying like a sparrow in my sleep
with only a pen to guide me
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Some Nights Missing You
like the letter that doesn’t come,
the one I would carefully slit open
and slowly unfold
Lennard J. Davis: Hillbilly Elegy is an example of ‘poornography,’ in which the rich try to speak on behalf of the poor
JD Vance has climbed to his current position as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, in part, by selling himself as a hillbilly, calling on his Appalachian background to bolster … Continue reading
Betsy Sholl: The Word ‘Swan’ on a Slip of Paper Fell from my Pocket
The wind that morning was deliciously wild—
one second the water rippled like black pleats,
the next it was all gust-driven glitter
blowing the ticket right out of my hand
for the swans to trample like a shed feather
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Fire Season Again
The fire now climbs the mountain’s back.
A red-gray haze swirls around the setting sun,
& the skies rain acrid ashes — tiny moth wings
flickering over everything.
Toi Derricotte: My great teacher, Galway Kinnell, taught me: “Speak the unspeakable.”
My father taught me:
You have to break the bones
To get to the heart
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Skimpy Clothes and August in the Deep South
A young woman is walking with her boyfriend, and it’s deep
summer in the South, like being in a sauna
but hotter and stickier
Richard Krawiec: The Eyes of Hiroshima
My father was a sailor in the first group of ships to land in Hiroshima after the atomic bombs were dropped in WWII.
Baron Wormser: Complicity | On Alice Munro
Munro has been likened to Chekhov but if one is looking at Russians the pertinent one seems to me to be Dostoevsky.
Michael Simms: Two Summer Songs
I can’t help but be in love
with the blissful light of lemonade at noon
And gazpacho in the evening
a slice of lime hanging by its wound
