Toi Derricotte: Invisible Dreams
I have to make a
place for my body in
my body.
Joanne Durham: Becoming Educated
No one spoke
of their exodus, how they fled homes
stolen or burned
Laurence Musgrove: In the Cockpit
I like to imagine that every morning
Before I get up, the pilot of my plane
Runs through the standard checklist,
Making sure the gauges and switches
Are set and secure for an easy takeoff
Jose Padua: Orange
Auntie Nellie was the first dead person I ever
saw and she was lying in her coffin in the church
in Orange, Virginia after spending her last years
in something like a dark mist…
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Early Morning Considerations After a Night of Rain
Good morning, welcome, new Thursday. I arc
the blankets away. The dog sheds gladness all
around me as war news shrapnels out of NPR.
Video: Wendell Berry reads his poem “The Peace of Wild Things”
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
Jianqing Zheng: The Dog Years of Reeducation (excerpt)
When the sampan glides to shore, the bird lands back on the shoulder of the rowing girl while lotus leaves whisper in the morning sunshine.
Theodore Roethke: The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Tony Gloeggler: Honestly
I’ll place a bowl of Cheez-Its
in her lap, drop a Milk Dud
or Jordan Almond, spoon melon
into her mouth.
Emily Suzanne Carlson: Mother of Pearl
oysters don’t ignore
the “irritant,” they tend to it,
letting it shimmer
Barbara Crooker: On Teaching Poetry Classes in My Old Elementary School in Honor of Its 100th Anniversary
Yes, I know my mother isn’t there, as I walk up and down Main Street;
she’s moved to a different zip code, the one with no returns.
Wally Swist: Three Poems for Tevis
I discover what remains
is the light that shines through
Kim Stafford: How to make money
Sell munitions to nations at war. Sell relief supplies
for distribution at war. Fly diplomats around to talk
about war. Pay speech-writers to equivocate about war.
