James Crews: Losing Heart | Poem and reflection
You might be
driving to work one stormy morning,
scowling at every car that passes you
when it happens again—that sudden
leap in the chest as you see the rain
“Walking in Beauty”: Closing Prayer from the Navajo Blessing Way Ceremony
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
David Kirby: Sex and Candy
Candy is to children what sex is to us, because when
you were a child, candy is what you thought about every
waking moment.
Video: Scotland Hates Trump | The Music Video
The Scottish people have much in common with the majority of Americans.
Kurt Brown: High Diver
Now she pivots like a dancer, gripping the board
with her toes, and rises as it quivers with her weight
then settles again. She waits until it stops,
until she gathers herself up to balance there,
tall and undeniable, her back to us in the withering light.
Baron Wormser: If
If, as a poet suggested a long while ago, the center is not holding. If morality no longer has any practicable basis. If public statements are cant and platitude. If … Continue reading
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Doors Where I Have Knocked
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Dion O’Reilly: Subject C, the Numinous, and Ellen Bass’s ‘Gate C-22’
“…the pure pleasure of the numinous poem, which, in the final analysis, might contain our personal myths, successful in the way myths are successful, in their transmission of complexity, magic, and the paradoxes of this painfully-beautiful world.”
Hayden Saunier: The Spin
My washing machine won’t operate
without the matte black hardcover
American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition,
placed atop its lid. I no longer question this.
Betsy Sholl: Monet’s Garden
When he was painting his lilies,
when he was refusing evacuation
despite the war being close enough
to hear from his garden,
was Monet offering the world lilies,
saying there are lilies as well as guns?
Jasleen Singh: The Trump Administration’s Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
The Trump administration is setting the stage for election subversion. This power play poses a grave threat to the future of U.S. election infrastructure. It is also, in many respects, illegal.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: In Response to a Student Asking Where to Find Poetry During Difficult Times
In your friend’s voice. Or silence.
In all those years it takes for a barn to collapse.
In the terrified tenderness of a first kiss.
In a last kiss too.
Barbara Hamby: Mockingbird on the Buddha
The mockingbird on the Buddha says, Where’s my seed,
you Jezebel, where’s the sunshine in my blue sky,
where’s the Hittite princess, Pharaoh’s temple, where’s the rain
for the misery I love so much?
Michael Simms: Ecstasy & Envy
Someone offered me Ecstasy
And I wondered what they had in mind.
Perhaps lying on a beach on the island
Of Antigua, the sun on my skin, a red sail
In the distance soon to arrive?
