Michael Simms: Last Testaments
at dawn you’ll arrive
having thrown your luggage in the River Styx
and we’ll drink from the silver cup of day
Barbara Crooker: Coffee
Because each day
is a fresh new start, revised as the sky
after rain. Because my mug is full
of dark goodness, and the day is a clean
blank sheet.
Dawn Potter: Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know What Love Is
I think back to those nights in Buck Lane, the melodramas of sex and desire, the intense affections but also the cruelties … the ruthlessness of self-absorption.
Audio: Call Me Antifa
Inspired by the spirit of the Greatest Generation who fought fascism in World War II, this song celebrates love over hate, peace over violence, and liberty over authoritarianism.
David Kirby: In Praise of Chaos
Picasso says, Inspiration exists but it
has to find us working. The more you work,
the more mistakes you make. If you make
enough of them, it’s considered your style.
Michael Simms: Baron Wormser (February 15, 1948 – October 7, 2025)
Although history will have the final word on who among us is read by future generations, I’ll put my money on Baron. His writing represents the best of the American spirit.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Ode to Sungolds
Sungolds, coughed my old neighbor, a bird
shat the seed.
Carine Topal: The Terrible Years
Our son sits on a yellow bench bloodied
in the square, waving to a soldier. It is to you he says goodbye.
Now we must pack our bag of bread, head to toe in soot,
ready to eat anything.
Michael Simms: Serene Gorilla in a Cloud of Butterflies
Her name is Malui and she is walking through a cloud of butterflies she’s disturbed.
Stephen Dobyns: Prague
The day I learned my wife was dying
I told myself if anyone said, Well, she had
a good life, I’d punch him in the nose.
How much life represents a good life?
Kurt Brown: The Kiss
That kiss I failed to give you.
How can you forgive me?
Barbara Crooker: Patty’s Charcoal Drive-In
First job. In tight black shorts
and a white bowling shirt, red lipstick
and bouncing ponytail, I present
each overflowing tray as if it were a banquet.
Jane Mead: Passing a Truck Full of Chickens/at Night on Highway Eighty
I saw the one that made me slow some—
I lingered there beside her for five miles.
Ted Kooser: Abandoned Farmhouse
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
