Sean Sexton: Angelic
I see how it is with them, left to their own pursuits
in our absence: the forgotten gate merely ajar
between the two pastures, kept that way for days
Rose Mary Boehm: Summer Trance
As large as the hill, I become a green, languid
animal, a soft giant with giant eyes, become
green love. Fat bees buzz in my lavender bushes
Alice Friman: The Apricot Tree
I’m walking the white-washed steps
winding the hills into town. The odor—
wild thyme and spearmint. And halfway, look,
an apricot tree ablaze with summer, heavy
with fruit.
Larry Levis: Elegy with a Chimneysweep Falling Inside it
If the soul had a written history, nothing would have happened:
A bird would still be riding the back of a horse,
And the horse would go on grazing in a field
Fred Johnston: The Summer Before We Were Killed in the War
We’d double scull the river, splitting the river
Like a scalpel through silk
Laurence Musgrove: Surely
wondering what we’d
have to do, to leave behind,
to lose, to grieve without stopping
Pascale Petit: The Moor Horses
And isn’t your blood free as a feral pony, coursing
through the uplands of your body?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Self-Portrait as Tuning Fork
and you quiver
as if struck by the great hand
of what is true
Baron Wormser: After Poetry Month
The poet tries to be canny while practicing an uncanny art.
Aidan Rooney: Bel-Air by Louis-Philippe Dalembert
those alleys seven times knifed then again then always
to be part of the tight knit gathered round over a sewer cover
to watch as they germinate
the stars no one of us had sown
Tony Gloeggler: Anyway
After we dropped dirt
on my father’s coffin
the long line of cars
drove back to the house.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit
Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
David Vine and Theresa (Isa) Arriola: The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All
Freeing Ourselves from the Monster Destroying Our Planet and Our Futures
Ed Harkness: Transplanting Tomatoes Amid the Rubble of a Bombed School
I’ll plant Tamatim here
as an experiment
to treat the wounded ground,
