F.R. Foksal: The Indignation Parade
you ran the risk of
making your whole world
fall down on its
head
Louie Skipper: Yellow Dust
Is it true the moment of my dying (which has borrowed
so much brightness from the sun) will demand
such satisfaction from me that I will be
blinded by my own last words?
Video: W.C. Williams reads ‘By the road to the contagious hospital’
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-
Christina Rossetti: The Plague
‘Listen, the last stroke of death’s noon has struck—
The plague is come,’ a gnashing Madman said…
Daniel Burston: John Prine, Working Class Poet (1947-2020)
John Prine was a national treasure, whose songs about love, loss and aging – many written while he was still a relatively young man! – reflect his working class roots. But even so, they have a universal and timeless relevance.
Robert Wrigley: Two Poems
they rise and form their three- or four-bird patrols
leaving the haunted campus behind,
until the priest raven perches alone and calls,
in search of the people none of them can find.
Majid Naficy: Morning Blend
Every morning my love
Brings me a cup of coffee
With a piece of dark chocolate.
Molly Fisk: The Lineage
the poets, tethered to each other
in the popular mind as if we were one
big family and we are
David Watts: Blessing in the Midst of Siege
We are cloistered in our houses
dodging a horrible virus
but it almost feels like blessing.
Michael Simms: Ten things to do before I start writing today
Read what I wrote yesterday — hate it. Read what Sam wrote yesterday — love it. Hate Sam. Think about 45-year friendship with Sam. Remember him stealing my girlfriend in college. No, wait that was me — I married her….
Lynn Ungar: Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Stephen Dobyns: Scale
After that, he spots
specks of lint, dust motes that grow with his attention
so huge they change into solar systems with planets
where he might see cities, rooftops and, who knows,
even a man mowing a his lawn, if he had the time.
Yana Djin: Tender are the nights
Tender are the nights spent in a haze.
Stone-cold the days. Sharp-cut.
In this city that reflects the rays
against its windows — constantly shut.
