Meg Pokrass: Summersaulting To Shore
My dark-haired lover explained marriage was like an animal. “There’s a smell when it dies,” he said. I let my marriage trickle out.
Hedy Habra: The Taste of the Earth
Two fawns cross the creek. One of them pauses, linked
to his mirror reflection by the tip of his tongue, parallel
worlds merge on the fault line of a folded image.
Jason Baldinger: A Seventy-Four Dollar Shotgun
two men in camouflage
drunk loud talk, stare at shotguns
Miriam Levine: Candlewood
We go into the dark and the dark opens.
Boats tipped with light and moon on the water.
Video: Soulmates
This video by Farid Ghanbari is a compilation of surrealistic clips from his previous films. The images have been juxtaposed in provocative ways to create a weird visual poetry.
Stephen Dobyns: The Poet’s Disregard
He ponders composing an ode
to his long time sidekick Death, but as his
own departure draws near their friendship
has grown problematic.
Arlene Weiner: Catering the Office Party
Some couldn’t eat ham and some wouldn’t eat lamb;
some couldn’t eat sugar, some couldn’t eat seeds.
So what could I order for our office feast?
And how could I cater for everyone’s needs?
Eva-Maria Simms, Michael Simms: Translating Rilke
Every thing is protected
by a grace ready for flight,
every stone and flower
every child at night.
Baruch November: Beard 7
In its color alone,
my beard is the sun falling upon the evening
and some days
it is chaffing brambles, poison
sumac, creeping red vines everywhere.
Joan E. Bauer: China Journal, 1997
In steam-baked Wuhan, land of fish and lakes, near the cross-banks
of Yangtze and Han, we walk into Mao’s sanctum, the grand hall
of hand-cut rock.
Doug Anderson: Original Sin
I don’t know what I’ve done
but I’m guilty.
Molly Fisk: Firmament
Daylight and darkness are real, and seasons,
but everything else is a story…
Danusha Laméris: Bonfire Opera
In those days, there was a woman in our circle
who was known, not only for her beauty,
but for taking off all her clothes and singing opera.
And sure enough…
John F. Kennedy: The Purpose of Poetry
In a 1963 eulogy for Robert Frost, John F. Kennedy described poetry as “the means of saving power from itself.”
