Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone (2)
For as long as I can remember
my mother told me how
I should feel, what to eat,
who to date, what clothes
looked good (and bad)
on my shape
Video: Lucille Clifton reads “won’t you celebrate with me”
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life?
James Crews: Possibility Still Exists
The smell of smoke’s now in the air,
which means a fire is not far off.
Which means something will kindle in you
if you let it
Marilyn Monroe: Fragments
my beaded rays have the colors I’ve
seen in a painting—ah life they
have cheated you
Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Sheaves
Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled,
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as by some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly into gold.
Chard deNiord: Turning 70
I know at last how to smile and not smile
at the same time in a way without trying that says,
“I’ve tasted ambrosia and mustard in the same bite
so many times my tongue’s lost its taste.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Grateful
And now it’s summer and the word for that is ‘strawberry,”
its bright green cap and freckled fruit.
Michael Simms: Scarecrow
The scarecrow watched over
His congregation, even as wind
And storms tore at his clothes
And the crows grew to know
His indecisive guardianship
H.D: Sheltered Garden
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest
Kurt Brown: Road Trip
Once in Kansas, I stood in a field and watched
the stars on the horizon revolve around my ankles.
People are always moving, even those standing still
because the world keeps changing around them, changing them.
Dawn Potter: Play Clothes
How many summers
did that red and white sundress last?
It was my mother’s before it was mine
Elizabeth Romero: Prayer
Heavenly Father
Who looks down on us
With all our confusions
Barbara Hamby: Ode to My 1977 Toyota
Engine like a Singer sewing machine, where have you
not carried me—to dance class, grocery shopping,
into the heart of darkness and back again?
Edgar Lee Masters: Conrad Siever
…here under the apple tree
I loved and watched and pruned
With gnarled hands
In the long, long years
