Michael Simms: Ecstasy & Envy
Someone offered me Ecstasy
And I wondered what they had in mind.
Perhaps lying on a beach on the island
Of Antigua, the sun on my skin, a red sail
In the distance soon to arrive?
Alfred Corn: Unforeseen Tragic Scenario
The heavy balls thundered back and forth and collided with the execs, bowling them over like ninepins.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Alive
Dear Board of Education, no one will ever
remember a test. Repeat. Stories,
poems, projects, experiments,
mischief, yes, but never a test.
Chana Bloch: Memento Mori
Unblessed in a downburst, I lost
my leafy summer, my lovely,
my crest, my crown.
Sydney Lea: Before the Operation
The surgeon assures my wife and me:
“a little scrape, then zip! Home-free.”
How did age come on with so little warning?
I woke up in tears early this morning,
then put on an album by the great Art Blakey.
Alison Luterman: Hard Listening
I am listening to the intensity
of his listening.
Robert Cording: New Morning
Always that moment
when I wake up
in the dark
before dawn
and the first birds
Barbara Crooker: This Summer Day
We are still ripening
into our bodies, still in the act of becoming.
Rejoice in the day’s long sugar.
Praise that big fat tomato of a sun.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Letter to the Others in the Dark
I am writing not to send you light,
but to let you know you are not alone
in the darkness. I am here, too,
scribbling with no sight, no certainty
Ryan Eckes: memo for labor
you cannot separate the job from the house from the rent from the earth from the food from the healthcare from the water from the transit from the war from … Continue reading
Amy Lowell: Lilacs
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs
Peer restlessly through the light and shadow
Of all Springs.
Al Ortolani: Two Poems
I imagined my mother by a fishpond
with garden rocks and submerged reeds,
a pool stocked with orange comets,
fantails, and spotted carp.
Shaheen Dil: From Letters to my Younger Self
Today my three-card spread says there’s a Twinkie in my future again
Mike Schneider: Three Hats
When Oddjob flings his bowler
in Goldfinger, it leaps from his hand
& sails like a frisbee across a meadow
& hovers, or seems to, as in a dream
