Robinson Jeffers: The Place for No Story
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks
Jose Padua: The Summer of Rock and Other Fragile Ecstasies
But it was also another summer of war,
the way just about every summer is a summer of war.
Luray Gross: Catching Sight
Take my hand. Let us walk together, even with war raging,
with the sea rising, with the oriole’s winter home
yielding to chainsaw and bulldozer.
With so many songs being left unsung,
let us sing.
Kristofer Collins: Trying to Read Levis at Drag Brunch 9.28.24
Yes, here is the late style of fire. Here is the burning
and the beauty of the thing engulfed.
Later I will not lack for poetry and my wife and I
will scorch the sheets.
Molly Fisk: Suffer No Fools
I woke in the dark
and watched light rise up
behind the trees, pale gray
to a backlit lemon yellow
turning gold and unlikely
blue, the colors blossoming
Tadeusz Dabrowski: The Sentence
It’s as if you’d woken in a locked cell and found
in your pocket a slip of paper, and on it a single sentence in a language you don’t know.
Sean Sexton: Plea
An evening has passed, and a young cow is still
crying among the herd this morning like the widow
in the Bible who wouldn’t leave an ill-tempered
judge alone.
Naomi Shihab Nye: A Palestinian Might Say
What?
You don’t feel at home in your country,
almost overnight?
Video: The Medallion
In Ruth Hunduma’s short documentary “The Medallion,” a mother’s memories serve as a window to a history of genocide and survival in Ethiopia.
Gary Fincke: The Book of Numbers
Ten thousand and one, I thought,
Ten thousand and two, and went
Outside, after that fever,
To bounce a ball off the roof
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: What I Know of Love When Times Are Dark
And if you don’t
know how to pray,
then perhaps you are doing it right.
Todd Friedman: Two Poems
Israel, you have become like Joseph’s brothers
who abandoned him in an empty cistern
and then sat down to a feast.
Barbara Hamby: Vex Me
Vex me, O Night, your stars stuttering like a stuck jukebox,
put a spell on me, my bones atremble at your tabernacle
of rhythm and blues.
Mary B. Moore: Gloria, Arbored
The foliage simmers or shivers,
airs itself out, and the round
leaf-scales, which join and branch,
make each stem a flat little tree:
a tree of trees.
