Naomi Shihab Nye & Michael Simms: Writing Prompt # 6 | Dear Vaccine
As we enter our new lives
will we remember
the faster we moved
the sicker we got?
John Clare: To John Clare
Well, honest John, how fare you now at home?
Bunkong Tuon: Fishing for Trey Platoo
Cambodians and Vietnamese, once enemies,
fish side by side on the same American pier.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: I’m Waiting
Waiting,
so, we can finally mend the pain of our broken
homelands, all the ruined places
of our being, oh Africa,
to mend our broken roads and broken minds.
Owen Hughes: Vaccination
After the shots
Not a fever
No side effect
Except this pause
Rachel Hadas: Holding on to hope is hard, even with the pandemic’s end in sight – wisdom from poets through the ages
As we begin to glimpse what might be the beginning of the end of the pandemic, what does hope mean? It’s hard not to sense the presence of hope, but how do we think of it?
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Some evenings
Some evenings, he would hide his face in his hands
for a few seconds —
Jena Schwartz: Writing Prompt #5 | One Little Acorn
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Claude McKay: After the Winter
Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We’ll turn our faces southward, love
Peter Blair: Vernation
On the road by the arena,
puddles fill ditches
and flaxen rushes wave
in March rain.
Arlene Weiner: The All-American Truck Stop
the flag flew in a foreign country,
or on the moon, a declaration,
Here an American stands, or stood
Martina Reisz Newberry: Nüshu
Games of innocence, death of innocence,
scent of longing…pray to these lesser gods,
my dears, that they will jump into the way
of what comes for us.
Rachel Hadas: Camilla
Our newborn granddaughter is named Camilla
from Aeneid VII’s warrior maiden,
the speedy runner, skimming over wheat,
scouring the ocean, keeping her feet dry.
