Jordan Smith: These Days
The danger of elegy is that it just tells us what we already know: we lose and suffer and become the subject of the loss and suffering of others. Liam had no patience for what he called the “I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed” school of poetry.
Betsy Sholl: Monet’s Garden
When he was painting his lilies,
when he was refusing evacuation
despite the war being close enough
to hear from his garden,
was Monet offering the world lilies,
saying there are lilies as well as guns?
Charles Harper Webb: Bad Dog
Bad Dog licks killers’ bloody hands,
leaps with joy for rapists, fawns at politicians’
crooked feet. “He’s an awful judge
of character,” the owner tells kind-hearted
strangers who scuttle past
Tony Gloeggler: This Kind of Room
I don’t
want to be back in love with Erica, driving
to some quaint upstate town, windows
down, in complete control of the tape deck
and we’re both singing along as loud
and as off key as we please
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: In Response to a Student Asking Where to Find Poetry During Difficult Times
In your friend’s voice. Or silence.
In all those years it takes for a barn to collapse.
In the terrified tenderness of a first kiss.
In a last kiss too.
Baruch November: After Bracha
A blessing for just being able
to arise in early pink-blue light.
A blessing for when lightning veins
a cloud or strikes the oak into flames.
A blessing for when the earth quakes
Barbara Crooker: Two Poems for Summer
And tomorrow, another hot one,
and that sweet juicy sun
will pop up again, staining
the horizon red, orange, gold.
Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Byron Hoot: The Mind in the Wind Seeing Where Things Lie
What I need are nights
of deep sleep; this riding the wind is not as easy
as it would seem to be.
Kristofer Collins: Pineapple Eddie (three poems)
This is not the color
if justice is what we expect. I feel
God’s thumb pushing down our heads
like dull tacks into this offended earth.
Steven Ratiner: Fathering
After the stroke, when language
froze over in his throat, he had a hard time
with the snow–– He couldn’t say,
and the sky wouldn’t stop saying
Barbara Hamby: Mockingbird on the Buddha
The mockingbird on the Buddha says, Where’s my seed,
you Jezebel, where’s the sunshine in my blue sky,
where’s the Hittite princess, Pharaoh’s temple, where’s the rain
for the misery I love so much?
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?
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.
