Robinson Jeffers: Shine, Perishing Republic
…a mortal splendor;
meteors are not needed less than mountains;
shine, perishing republic.
Sean Connolly: Sacrifice
You can’t educate a secret. Many defy time and live in the throats of birds chortling about the discovery of the universe, once and always hidden beyond sight.
Jeffrey Harrison: Double Visitation
There I was with my father again alive
walking around the back yard together,
and I hardly noticed that it wasn’t our back yard
or that he looked like he was in his fifties.
Video: The Lost Words Blessing
Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Phillis Wheatley: To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth
Hail, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn
Peter Makuck: Two Poems
Every summer day was the last I thought,
even before my parents were gone
Kathryn Levy: They
They scare us with headlights. They swerve
into our bodies. They surround us with houses
and ten foot high fences.
Stephen Dobyns: How to Like It
These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
Sandy Solomon: Ghazal
A night of ghazals comes to an end to fill with birds.
As the sky blues, their calls braid in New Jersey.
José Emilio Pacheco: High Treason
I’d die
for ten places,
a few folks,
ports, forests, deserts, forts,
a broken city, gray, monstrous
Adrian Blevins: How I wrote The Brass Girl Brouhaha
I wrote The Brass Girl Brouhaha by tattooing the word WRONG across my heart to help me muster the strength I’d need to argue with a world that wanted me to say “hey, y’all!” in a hill-country accent sipping tea under a dogwood in a pink smock smattered with etchings of ivy.
Kristofer Collins: Good Days
My place in this life
a given and the years rolling out
in front of me a tender invitationto stick around
Terry Blackhawk: At the Moscow Circus
The illusion comes and goes and I don’t deny
I almost see them as ‘real’—all of them, the bear
inside the man inside the bear.
Tayve Neese: He says, it’s so shallow
murex shells teaching
wisdom of spirals
