Meg Kearney: Hearts of Poets (Two Poems)
By the time his body washed ashore, all
that was left was burned on the beach, deathbed
a pyre lit by three friends; two then fled
Noelle Canin: War Watching
I know what blood looks like, she said.
I know what a home looks like
after a bomb.
Robert Cording | Notes: August, 2020, Whidbey Island
Some days all of America—the whole messy idea of it—
seems to be right here, the military meeting
the idyllic so casually.
Lorine Niedecker: When Ecstasy is Inconvenient
Know amazedly how
often one takes his madness
into his own hands
and keeps it.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Sean Sexton: Lightening
Did I learn the wrong word or is this world indeed lessening
whether gradually or at once, and another lovely pine
of my familiar horizon assumed the sorrel countenance
of demise
Ann Fisher-Wirth: Two Inaugural Poems
Before I lived in the South I had never
smelled road kill, that sweet sick
that climbs inside your nostrils
and colonizes your brain, so had never
thought about vultures.
Gerry LaFemina: Last Report Card before High School
Do I have to say I never kissed her?
Sure, I could solve for X but still nothing
seemed to add up. That was the sum of my knowledge.
My whole life then was about what I wasn’t doing.
Kathryn Levy: Tomorrow & The Subject of Flowers
And the children who run
from hiding place to
hiding place? Let them
cover their eyes and
count out their seconds,
as the wagon man watches
Therese L. Broderick: Beautiful Uses | The Compassion of James Crews
This book’s enduring beauty and daily usefulness can cradle and help to heal our broken hearts.
Ed Simon: The Pennsylvanian Period
There must be stones in Frick Park
that no human hand has ever touched.
The stratified Conemaugh, of Ames
limestone, sandstone, shale, and
Duquesne coal.
Stephen Haven: Roadside Portals
I see roadside altars that open portals.
I see drivers slipping by those mounds
of cardboard signs and paper flowers
Edna St. Vincent Millay: “And you as well must die” (Sonnet 19)
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Adam Patric Miller: Last Lesson
teaching will gut you—
but in a nourishing way
like scraping out a cantaloupe
with a big silver spoon
