Nina Kossman: Upon seeing a portrait of Genrikh Yagoda* on a wall in a Moscow police station
so many feet that did not run away,
so many mouths that did not speak,
so many inheritors of what can’t be described
Doug Anderson: Six-thirty AM
And the black lines the trees made at sundown yesterday
in one direction now point the other, saying
see what you missed in your life that was there all the time.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Darn Lucky
It happens, you know—the day opens itself
like a tulip in a warm room, and you meet someone
who amazes you with their willingness
to be a thousand percent alive
Video: There is Power in a Union by Joe Hill (with bio and lyrics)
From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where working-men defend their rights,
It’s there you find Joe Hill
Bhikshuni Mettika: Just in Case
The mountain went on holding me. Then it let me go.
Philip Levine: On The Meeting Of Garcia Lorca And Hart Crane
…let’s not
invent a dialogue of such eloquence
that even the ants in your own
house won’t forget it.
Sydney Lea: How-to for Older Age
you won’t know that squall in the soul
as when you pondered your place in the world.
Whatever that was, now is.
Leslie Anne Mcilroy: Wake Up Love
Love sleeps nude and unashamed,
a glass of water near to quell the fires
we mistake for love, a blanket to wrap
the broken who come to her bed alone.
Majid Naficy: Little Armenia
The city remained apart from you
Lying beyond Zaiandeh River.
Only poets of midnight
Knocked at the door of your taverns…
Dawn Potter: Senior Photo, 1982
They say there is a me
who is beautiful but I
snub her in the chalk-dust
hallways, on the bronzed
fields.
Joel Christensen: What Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ can teach us about reentering the world after a year of isolation
Homer can help guide us as we return back to our normal worlds after a year of minimizing social contact. He can also, I believe, offer guidance on how people can heal.
Stephen Dobyns: The Miracle of Birth
As they joylessly wait for reassignment,
they dangle their feet into the blue abyss at the brink
of heaven like boys on a wall bumping their sneakers
on the bricks below.
Chard deNiord: “We Will Not Give Up on Each Other”: A Conversation with Major Jackson
We are living in an age of absurdity, but I am casting for wider seas.
Michael Simms: American Ash (text and video)
Old warriors rarely
say anything about
people they killed or
horrors they saw
