Timons Esaias: No Boat
There is no boat there
on Ararat’s strong shoulders.
Ignore the astronaut
and take my word.
There is no boat there
and no trees, either.
Lao Yang: “Magnolia” by Michael Simms, translated into Chinese and recited 《玉兰》
Suppose you held what you love so tightly
you broke it
Suppose you let something slip away
Mantas Balakauskas: letter from Rome
I’d really like to tell you everything
but there in the cities we once fully trusted
white noise dominates
Tadeusz Dabrowski: Three Poems
One day the jars will break, and the memories will merge into a single oily puddle, which I shall enter, as into fire.
Dion O’Reilly: Ringo Starr
You weren’t the one I loved. I must confess:
I didn’t have the depth yet. It was Paul, of course
his droopy eyes and putty lips,
babylike, unthreatening, despite the then-
brutal sexiness of the songs.
David Ades: So, This Is What It Is
I am like a child who has wandered off
and doesn’t know the way back,
or an old man, disoriented, not even alarm
crossing the blank canvas of his face.
Luray Gross: Small Fists Knocking
Is a poem a teaspoon of salt in the ocean,
one grain of sand placed carefully
on a turret of the castle
just before the wave rushes in?
Byron Hoot: On That Day
In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away.
Christine Gelineau: Artificial Intelligence
It was Kristallnacht that motivated
my mother-in-law’s parents
to put her and her younger sister
on the Kindertransport train
to England
Robert Cording: Dome Houses
When erected, the domes must have looked
like something built to colonize Mars.
Beth Copeland: Second Wife
Fifteen years ago I drove south to see you as trees broke
into bloom—redbuds, pears, dogwoods—and my heart
unfolded like a bud closed too long in the cold.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
Gary Margolis: Overlooking the Sea
Who wouldn’t want
to be led back to their century,
their tent, their house of stones?
Their window, overlooking the sea.
Joan E. Bauer: Lovers and Other Strangers
We’re all strangers. But after a while,
you get used to it. You become deeper
strangers. That’s a sort of love.
