George Herbert: Love (III)
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
Michael Simms: Jude the Obscure, Forgiveness
I wish Lea could see this light
lowering itself gently into the arms
of the Aphrodite sweet shrub
and tangling itself in the thorns
of Jude the Obscure named for
the many petals of our sins against others.
Zeina Azzam: My love, how can I contact you? حبيبي، كيف بدي اتصل فيك؟
They handcuffed him, didn’t listen when he’d speak,
callously severing him from his home
as his wife cried, حبيبي، كيف بدي اتصل فيك؟
Judson Mitcham: Poison
But it’s too late now. We are riding in his car,
and he’s three sheets to the nuclear wind,
he’s roaring drunk on the con that he ran
to put us where we are
Jennifer L Freed: Lessons
if you were that woman, then you, too,
would ask for repetition of bag and back and bank,
of leave and leaf and left and live
Robert Wrigley: A Certain Man
For in the loop of this hell there’s a farcical rule,
that says when certain men find a certain man
of use—one that’s spiteful, vacant, and cruel —
he becomes for his purposes the perfect tool…
Molly Fisk: Early
Small towns at daybreak are so nostalgic:
the only thing missing’s a train whistle.
Good morning, America. Mercenaries
in Portland last night teargassed a wall
of mothers. How long will we remember?
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko: Yes, I affirmed…
It was then that the light filtered through the curtain and passed through me as all things pass. Breathing out. Breathing in. Breathing out. Breathing in. Ah, Spring!
Barbara Huntington: Our Big Toes
I’d let that old woman repeat her crime if
I could see
Fred’s happy faces
one more time
Angele Ellis: Memory’s Self-portrait
Seeing Things by Marjorie Maddox. Wildhouse Poetry (an imprint of Wildhouse Publishing), 2025.
Delmore Schwartz: The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep
Michael T. Young: Two Poems
It begins not in the trees exactly
but in what they do to the light
Alison Luterman: At First
as the days bled into each other and I bore helpless witness
to the plagues rained down in my name on those we called other,
when I saw that the soft bodies of children were the battleground,
the stone began to burn with rage and then shame
Gerry LaFemina: Spring Redux
Every bird’s got perfect pitch
they remind me again,
even that bitchy blue jay
on the high branches of the apple tree.
