Nidia Hernández: Río Turbio translated by Rowena Hill
I stopped in front of
the silence of all that distance
of my country being erased
Abby Zimet: Wearin’ Yesterday’s Misfortunes Like A Smile
He’s a poet he’s a picker he’s a prophet he’s a pusher
He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned
He’s a walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home
David Kirby: Whatever Happened to Bobby Dunbar?
26 people
were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre,
among them a first grader whose father was later
confronted by a man who said it was all a hoax
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Acceptance
Today grief is a long steady rain
Adam Bittleston: September
Into the ripening
Of earth’s great gifts
The mists of autumn
Begin to be woven.
Joan E. Bauer: The Man on the Flying Trapeze
He was a gentle man because he knew he could kill someone.
Baron Wormser: The Harrowing of Hart Crane (Among Others)
The fate of eloquence in modern times is played out in Crane’s poetry, not in some ultimate fashion but, rather, as a perpetual vision-quest one man puts himself through, a quest in which poetry is, at once, the means and the end.
Hart Crane: The Air Plant
The lizard’s throat, held bloated for a fly,
Balloons but warily from this throbbing perch.
Chard deNiord: I Call Out to You
Any moving object must reach halfway on a course before it reaches the end; and because there are an infinite number of halfway points, a moving object never reaches the … Continue reading
Christine Rhein: Miscarriage
I want to talk to you—Alito, Barrett,
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas
Richard Hoffman: Mourning Gaza
What does the pale infant turning to dust
in the gray light deep in the powdery rubble know
of the torn hands of her parents digging to find her?
Barbara Hamby: 17 Dollars
That’s how much the man who owned DuBey’s gave me
for my books that time you insisted
they were taking up space and we needed the money.
Kathryn Levy: Three Poems
The geese are calling—this is
time to depart. They gather and sink and
soar toward somewhere.
Betsy Sholl: Helium
Oh, sweet dream,
stay with lovers afloat and doe-eyed donkeys,
don’t let the wind shift to newsclips of burnt
steeples, smoldering hospitals and schools.
