Liza Katz Duncan: Bayshore Elegy
You’d have to be crazy to call home
a strip of sand that will be underwater
in fifty years and oh,
my God, what does that make me?
Sydney Lea: A Monk After Dark
One boot sags like him in his cubicle’s corner.
He drops the other to the floor with a grimace.
Carolyn Miller: Street Trees of San Francisco
despite everything
that keeps going wrong—the ginkgos,
opening tiny green fans.
Barbara Hamby: My Translation
I am translating the world into mockingbird, into blue jay,
into cat-bombing avian obbligato, because I want
more noise, more bells, more senseless tintinnabulation
Philip Levine: Belle Isle, 1949
We stripped in the first warm spring night
and ran down into the Detroit River
to baptize ourselves in the brine
of car parts, dead fish, stolen bicycles,
melted snow.
David Kirby: My Girlfriend Killed James Brown
“Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw who
my seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend,
and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three
weeks later, James Brown is dead.”
Cynthia Atkins: Hairbrush
He’d fall asleep on my chest, breath light as a falling leaf.
Now, he glides the bristles down my neck— He gently fluffs
the tufts, like airing the pillows.
Fred Shaw: To the Fuckhead Who Stole My Bike
gunning with the bebop of another
coaster at its last dip, the valves
of your heart opening
and closing without fail
Elizabeth Romero: This is me without you
I cannot be with the birds
With their mites and their feathers
And their hot little bodies
Their impassioned but inscrutable
Comments on their world
Audio: Robert Frost reads ‘West-Running Brook’ and ‘The Death of the Hired Man’ (with texts)
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
Mel Packer: Hots and a Cot
Payphone only cost a dime
in 1963 Wickenburg Arizona
where I had bedded down
courtesy of the local police
Robert Service: Compassion
For God knows it is good to give;
We may not have so long to live,
So if we can,
Let’s do each day a kindly deed,
And stretch a hand to those in need,
Bird, beast or man.
Jose Padua: Nirvana
enjoying the
path I’m taking
and the unobscured view
of blue mountains
as my hair
slowly turns
gray
Arlene Weiner: Another Art
Put it on eBay, ka-ching, ka-ching—
keep nothing but the things that give you cheer.
But so many objects seem to want to cling
Vox Populi 