Naomi Shihab Nye: Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit
Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
Rachel Hadas: Summer Nights and Days
So far the nights feel lonelier than the days.
In light, the living keep me company,
and memories of voices through the years.
Sean Sexton: Unrecognizable
A friend of my sister attended the reading—
sat in the back of the hall—coming forth only after
everyone had gone.
Barbara Crooker: Pentimento
In the lost rooms of my childhood,
cinnamon and nutmeg float in the air
David Kirby: My Sunday
My Sunday is doing great
it’s driving along at 35 mph with its sleeves rolled up
and one arm out the window
dog with its head out the window barking at nothing
Fred Johnston: With My Father on Broadway in the Rain
I wanted to be back in our hotel room
Looking out the single window from that height
Knowing I could not fall, that if all gave way I could always fly
Pascale Petit: Roebuck
Tell me there is a meadow, afterwards,
that the roebuck will come
to the top of my garden
John Edward Simms: The Friendship Sweater and Radical Neutrality
A Response to the Editor’s “A Note to Our Readers Concerning Vox Populi’s Coverage of the War on Gaza”
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: The Grand Quilt
I don’t believe we can stitch together
only scraps of beauty, squares of light.
James Crews: Finding my Mother
The day you passed away, I stumbled
along icy sidewalks, searching for any
sign of you
Michael Simms: Leaving Walden
Is it true the distance between atoms
is proportionate to the distance between stars
and the world we know is mostly empty space?
Yongbo Ma: Midway Stop
It was an autumn long ago
I was still young then, still in love with something
Donna Hilbert: Two Poems
You are the rosemary I add to the soup:
how you pressed pungent bristles
between thumb and finger
James Crews: Choosing the Light
Relentless
as the urge that also blooms in us—
to find the things that bring us alive,
and open ourselves fully to them, never
giving up
