Countee Cullen: Heritage
Africa? A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds
Jose Padua: To the Ruling Class and All the Fearful Acolytes of Its Pale Supremacy
the sweetly subtle strength of a great
and rarely spoken language
Abby Zimet: Rest In Poetry
We bid fond farewell to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, indefatigable poet, publisher, painter, pacifist, iconoclast, political activist, “heart of the Beat generation” and “legend of American letters, bookselling, rabble rousing, wild dreaming.”
Dawn Potter| Song: The Famous Vision of America
an emptiness, too, in the bright
flicker of a cardinal on my back fence
Matt Hohner: Where Are You Sending Your Poems This Week?
I’m sending my poems to reform school.
To prison. To the front lines. Straight to hell
on a one-way ticket.
Arlene Weiner: Nobody’s coming to save the children
Catherine Doty’s pitiless poems beautifully show us what we don’t want to see: children’s poverty, abuse, neglect. And their meanness. Poor children living in squalor, which Doty’s language often veils in lyrical glamor.
Kathleen O’Toole: On Grief, in a time of pandemic
What I’m learning about grief is that
it comes and goes, like the shadow in front of me
on the afternoon sidewalk.
John Samuel Tieman: After Jorge Guillén
You slept and your arms stretched and almost caressed
my insomnia.
Gary Margolis: The Desire to Write Poetry at Forty
the mysterious
feeling between her
and Emily, the centuries in
between two women
alone in their rooms.
Joy Gaines-Friedler: Detroit
I think of the sound of factories in the voice
of an old boyfriend from The Cass Corridor –
cocoon of his attic bedroom, mattress on the floor,
candle light and books in that long season of snow
Gerry LaFemina: Security
My carry-on flagged for protein
bars that might be plastique, & I failed
the swab test, some residue battery acid
or fertilizer on my fingertips.
Cynthia Atkins: Making Lunch
I pack a thermos, 2 cookies, tart apple slices that will later smile at you from a bag—My noontime missive, a text of seduction.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: I was twenty then
The glint of those stares —
a flash of mica — offered to me &
just like that, I felt my loneliness shatter
Jan-Mitchell Sherrill: Two love poems
Come with me
to the river again: we will test Heraclitus,
kiss deep at the tender point of sleepless change.
