Elizabeth Romero: Wind
The evidence of wind is in the scarves
Of people waiting for the bus
W.S. Merwin: Remembering
There are threads of old sound heard over and over
phrases of Shakespeare or Mozart the slender
wands of the auroras playing out from them
Jose Padua: Until the End of the Rain and the Sudden Demise of Endless Rainy Nights
let us gather our objects of grief like fierce weapons
against the kingdom of the ruling class
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins: A Red Tractor
It’s not weather or seasons I’m really thinking about,
merely the time of year, in a year of big changes,
when the best, most awaited change is about to happen
Majid Naficy: The Cypress of Abarkuh
Once with my father
I sat in its shade.
We were coming from Isfahan
And wanted to go to Ferdows
From the desert.
Pauletta Hansel: The Road
There’s only past throwing
its shadow on the lane that sends you back
toward what is gone. Your eyes will soon adjust.
Michael Simms: Meconium
it is sacred, the way
soil clinging to the seed
of a new shoot
pushing out of the earth
is sacred
Robert Gibb: Frances Perkins at the Homestead Post Office
Minimum wage, overtime, social security . . .
A storm of progress to the angel of history,
The debris of paradise scattered about
The aggrieved, beseeching crowds.
Barbara E. Young: Cousin Jill
I like a woman who can fall
Jack said to Jill.
Marco North: the falling boy (too bitter a fruit)
He was one of many trying to escape, grabbing onto the plane thinking they would let him in.
Peter Blair: Variegation
After rain dries,
the shadows of leaves
star the white cement
Kari Gunter-Seymour: Heartland Hospice
When I was a kid, sick, he’d sing Hank William’s
Hey Good Lookin,’ call me his best girl.
Michael Simms: The Seafarer
I can sing the song if you like,
Go on about the going, the work,
The desperate unendurable days….
