Mary Jane White: Friend, You Count Yourself Faithless,
…the Sea and all her ships
are women you are too certain of —
who would not marry you for love.
Video: Philip Levine reads Federico García Lorca (text included)
Philip Levine reads Federico García Lorca’s “New York (Office and Denunciation)”
Bhikshuni Vijaya: Keep Going
Sometimes the most direct path is not a straight line.
Wendy Mnookin: Celebration
I’ll fill my wedding vase
with deep-veined lilies, harlot asters,
pollen will dust the table
where I mass them every week.
Kristofer Collins: Jack Teagarden Buries Louis Armstrong’s Oriental Strut, Mesa, NM, ca.1926
lifting the tarnished curve of his horn to papery lips, Jack
Teagarden somewhere in 1947, his heart piled up with booze
and debt, but still a suppleness to his mouth, a flash
of something dangerous in the hard set of his jaw
Toi Derricotte: Holy Cross Hospital
would our bodies be the same? could we hide among the
childless? she always reminded me of a lady at the bridge
club in her mother’s shoes, playing her mother’s hand.
Jim Daniels: Strawberry
the final time I saw my mother
she was trying to find
the last strawberry on her plate
Jose Padua: Puñeta
Mother, you were the history
that never made the books,
the woman who fed us
chicken flavored with garlic
and ginger, sweet pork with
soy sauce and rice
W.H. Auden: At Last the Secret is Out
At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Edison Jennings: Homebound
it wasn’t death that did them part
(that came later), but the lifeguard
at the public pool who parted them
quite easily
Alison Luterman: Witch Walk
I don’t know what I’d expected–a portal, perhaps,
to magic me elsewhere, but she spoke only of a slight shift
in perception, that which might allow
a tiny purplish wildflower to be a doorway.
Richard St. John: The Tao to Disneyland 
Disneyland at last: The draw-bridged entry! Monorail!
Tom Sawyer’s cave. Gators on the Jungle Cruise. Natives
passing in canoes. Snack-bar at the Matterhorn.
Shannon K. Winston: Lilt
Lilt is the name of the woman you want to be—
someone who pumps her feet like a child on a swing set
and laughs and laughs and laughs into the sky.
Vox Populi 