Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kurt Brown: “Yonder” by Herman de Coninck
I seek a village.
And in it a house. And in it a
room, in which a bed, in which a woman.
And in that woman a lap.
Sean Sexton: Planting Aeschynomene Seed
It pours from a muslin sack like sunlight
through a cracked window shade, fifty pounds
to a metal washtub, old as your footsteps.
Mary B. Moore: Amanda and the News, c. 2016
I’m old as stones and not as solid.
Gloria fritters a while
and fiddles my left eardrum,
a tickle not a hum.
Thomas McGuire: Garden Plots
I’ve come to half believe what Ho Chi Minh
said about his need for more poets
who could lead a charge, sharpen bayonets.
Leslie Anne Mcilroy: Two Poems
Driving through Pennsylvania is lovely
except for the God, Bait & Guns of it all,
except for the money and bullets behind it,
the fishing line, triggers and damnation.
Barbara Hamby: Ode on My Mother’s Handwriting
Her a’s are like small rolls warm from the oven, yeasty,
fragrant, one identical to the other, molded
by a master baker, serious about her craft, but comical, too,
smudge of flour on her sharp nose
Nate White: Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
Four Poems by Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 translated into Chinese by Ma Yongbo 马永波
we are the weeping spring rain
Bertolt Brecht: In Praise of Doubt
What one thought to be certain,
wavered. But wherever
the wavering wavered,
even the wavering did not waver enough.
Sandy Solomon: Reading
The pasts, the past perfects: each sentence
a forest pool shining with borrowed,
broken light
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Every Poem
the window lets the light change
so every time you re-enter the poem,
it feels different—familiar, but new
Warsan Shire: Conversations About Home
When I meet others like me I recognise the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
James Crews: Meditation Class
I wiped the fog from the glass and saw
a statue of the Buddha on a shelf, laughing
at himself, laughing at me standing there
in a puddle, under a pine tree that kept
dripping on my head
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.
