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?
Toi Derricotte: The Minks
In the backyard of our house on Norwood,
there were five hundred steel cages lined up,
each with a wooden box
roofed with tar paper
Dawn Potter: Piers Plowman
Who mutters the low notes, croons the old riversift,
water tumbling into stone and sand? Who trembles
the cows clustered in the thin shade of the high hill?
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
Ellery Akers: Four Prose Poems
Each of us is a struck bell that still reverberates. Walk down the street, and everyone who passes you is echoing inside.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Night Sky
We’re arguing about the stars again. It’s midnight when he pulls/drags me outside into the frozen dark. Look up! he says.
Adrian Rice: Among the Lavender
Honeybees spend their busy day
hovering among the lavender
with constant co-workers for company.
Brett Wilkins: Israel Kills Daughter, Infant Grandson of Slain Palestinian Poet Refaat Alareer
The daughter, infant grandson, and son-in-law of Refaat Alareer—the renowned Palestinian poet assassinated last year in an Israeli airstrike—were killed Friday in another Israel Defense Forces bombing, this one reportedly targeting a building hosting an international relief charity in Gaza City.
Barbara Hamby: Ode on Killing Sadness
the emcee said at the start
of the evening, “Here we are killing
sadness,” and the music did take the sting
out of the night
Michael T. Young: Two Poems
we never see that ball of light cradled
in their green palms
Vox Populi 