Gary Margolis: I was Living in a Poem
Lines so plain I didn’t know, at first,
I was living in a poem.
Joan E. Bauer: Get Your Kicks
This August my niece Holly will drive
the Mother Road. She’s a writer & I say:
Don’t miss anything: not cornfields, chili fries,
maple syrup farms, not the Big Texan
Steak House in dusty Amarillo…
Jason Irwin: Cucumbers
“I still can’t bring myself to buy cucumbers. He loved them.” she says, but never mentions the car accident, or how she had blamed me for your drinking again…
Molly Fisk: She Lived to See
ate only bites but
always well: warm boysenberry pie,
bone broth matzoh ball soup
Jose Padua: And I Walked Through the Market and Stared at the Harbor Lights Through the Soft Rain
And sometimes the best way
to express belief of any kind
is to laugh
Video: Daughter of the Sea
Daughter of the Sea is a cinematic poem evoking a fisherman’s relationship with his daughter and with the sea. Shot in the French town St Jean de Luz.
Robert Wrigley: Narrating Night to the New Puppy Gladys
These are clouds and those are stars,
while over there, the headlights of cars.
Up from the east ridge the full moon’s rise
reflected on the west in a whitetail’s eyes.
Jason Baldinger: time is dead
time died three weeks ago it went quietly no friends or family by the bedside no obituary no news no soundbyte I heard a reputable source say it had … Continue reading
Terry Blackhawk: Chambered Nautilus, with Tinnitus and Linden
Call it a squint of sound,
tone on the edge of not existing at all
Rebecca Elson: Antidotes to Fear of Death
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Michael Simms: Bus
One afternoon at a bus stop in Ruston, Louisiana we picked up a single passenger, a huge man in a dirty plaid shirt, grease-stained khakis, and unlaced boots covered in mud.
Abby Zimet: John Prine as Tender Poet
“If his songs were allowed to exist in the world—so simply written, so profoundly beautiful —surely there was room for other good, decent things, too.”
James Wright: Trying to Pray
This time, I have left my body behind me, crying
In its dark thorns.
