Elizabeth Romero: No Substitutes
A shy skinny kid at the counter
Ordered pea soup.
The waitress dumped it from a small can
Added water and heated it.
Elsa Gidlow: Despair
I can laugh now.
Have you not heard my laughter?
It leads the winds:
They come tumbling and bubbling after.
Stephen Haven: Iowa City, 1983
I remember best the cartography of each failed kindness…
Robert Wrigley: A Similar While
The window-walloped chickadee that burst
from the hollow of her hands at her chest
startled her
Baruch November: Two Poems
I would like to trade all
these bitter flavors
for a few holy sparks,
a bit of heavy
forgetting, a long kiss
Kathleen O’Toole: Her Grip
Now, her magnificent grasp
of language diminished, her hands
express all there is to say: hold me,
stay with me. Don’t leave me alone.
Chard deNiord: To the Muse
You wakened me to a dream of waking
in which I approached you and sang
your name.
William Wordsworth: Surprised by Joy
An elegy for Wordsworth’s daughter Catherine, who died in 1812, aged three.
Michael T. Young: How to Survive the End of the World
these strangers random as bits of sea glass
collected and admired
Sandy Solomon: Casual Labor
The man at the front door wants work,
any job. Hand on the knob, I start
to turn him down, to swing the door’s weight
to, but then I consider my mother’s mother.
Kai Coggin: Essence
and did you know these tiny sprouts
these little leaves and baby greens
already hold the heavy flavors of their final selves?
George Drew: Federico García Lorca, You Have Ruined My Day
this, in the end, might as well have been a poem about savage reckonings
Claude McKay: Harlem Shadows
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!
