David Kirby: Shorty Boudreaux
He really was short.
He’d get on a box and disappear under the hood
and jump down half an hour later,
grinning and wiping his hands on a rag,
and ask me about school.
Barbara Crooker: Treadmill
We lift weights. We
feel great. We
do yoga. We
eat granola.
Emily De Ferrari: Mark the Day
measure the time
since the last poem
since the lost word
Joan E. Bauer: She Kept Her Own Company
Anna May memorably kills a Chinese warlord,
her rapist, with a dagger. On film, couldn’t kiss
or bed a white man. Off-screen, another matter.
Zbigniew Herbert: The Envoy of Mr. Cogito
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn
Chard deNiord: River
lose then find yourself where self begins in emptiness
Valerie Bacharach: Crows
Some days I don’t know what to do with this rage I carry.
Margo Berdeshevsky: Listen….Listen
Or firefly, night-lighter,
what eye can see your ladybird
love’s wingbeat
Robert Okaji: Nothing of Heaven
How must we interpret
such change, feelings sorted and filed
into separate chambers, like people
herded into showers, like bullets
in the air seeking flesh.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: I Dream of Kevin Bacon Playing Guitar to his Goats
and I ask him “why you, Kevin Bacon, why
are you in my dream? I’ve not even
watched Footloose all the way through.”
Jean Toomer: Harvest Song
My ears are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time.
Laurence Musgrove: Healing
Have you ever thought
that you weren’t healing
as fast as you thought
you should
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: Week One
She is fine like a ringlet of fiddlehead fern
before it unfurls in the summer forest
