Robert Gibb: Two Poems
Snow leopard, dolphin,
Whistling swan—each invoked totem
Another dead giveaway.
Martha Silano: I’m Not So Good at Corpse Pose
We’ve just woken from the dead, having been in deep rest,
when she rouses us with a clanging bell
Elizabeth Romero: Another Night
Like a deranged animal
the refrigerator growls on
Larry Levis: Childhood Ideogram
Where did he go, that autumn, when he chose
The chaste, faint ideogram of ash, & I had
To leave him there, white bones in a puzzle
By a plum tree, the sun rising over
The Sierras?
James Crews: Homeless
How do you pack up a whole house,
help your parents haul your toys thrown
in boxes from the liquor store, stuff them
in the back of the car in the middle
of the night because they can’t afford
to pay the rent they owe?
Mosab Abu Toha: my grandfather and home
my grandfather used to count the days for return with his fingers
he then used stones to count
not enough
he used the clouds birds people
Pascale Petit: A Mother Sings
I will rebirth her on banks of the river of life.
Only I have to wade through the river of thorns
while she sleeps.
I am her country and her lagoon.
Michael Simms: House
You want to lie down in the lost field
of your courage and sleep
beside the blurred road of snow
Gertrude Stein: Two Poems
All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling.
Lisa Suhair Majaj: The Poem
The poem was found in the rubble
of a six-story residential building
in Khan Yunis, destroyed by a 2000
pound bomb that sent fire to the sky
and death to the burning earth.
Tony Gloeggler: Knowledge
He’s unaware he’s built
like a bowling pin,
that his shaved head shines
like Mr. Clean and everybody
stares when he waddles
Barbara Hamby: Athena Ode
Road diva, divine mixologist, cancan dancer
of the mandible wars, show me the way of mind
over what’s-the-matter-with-you, girl, swirling from mouths
of righteous dudes.
Barbara Hamby: St. Clare’s Underwear
there’s your average man, hirsute and raging with testosterone,
Godzilla incarnato, King Kong with big feet, Frankenstein
hovering over some delectable damsel with skin like fresh pastry
