Larry Levis | At the Grave of My Guardian Angel: St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans
And without beauty, Bakunin will go on making his forlorn & unreliable little bombs in the cold, & Oswald will adjust
The lenses on the scope of his rifle, the one
Friend he has carried with him all the way out of his childhood,
The silent wood of its stock as musical to him in its grain as any violin.
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Forgetting the Year
remember the day at the beach when the sun
began to explain Heidegger to you while thunderclouds
rumbled up from the horizon like Nazi submarines?
D.H. Lawrence: Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano
Edison Jennings: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten
A student at Patrick Henry High, Oakum
asserted he didn’t give a shit about Marse Robert,
Stonewall Jackson, Beaux Beauregard, or any
of them fancy Southern boys
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: An Open Thank You Letter to Kristen Who Works at the Cemetery
There are moments so flooded with tenderness
every wall around our heart collapses
from the beauty of it
Michael Gregory: Third Day of Christmas | Earth Air Wood Water Fire
Too many missing from this year’s mailing list.
Looking back I’m humbled to remember
how many stupid things I’ve done and survived
Joan E. Bauer: They Left Chicago Behind
Saul Bellow called Chicago: a prairie city with a waterfront
& the trees he remembers, elms & cottonwoods.
Tony Magistrale: Thinking about Brueghel on a Sunday Afternoon
Despite the ice-bound world outside my own winter window,
how much colder it appears there
in the teal-tinted landscapes they inhabit.
Barbara Hamby: Elvis and Tolstoy Save the World
I am standing in line waiting for the bus to take me
across the street to Graceland when Tolstoy shows up
with his white beard and peasant’s garb
The Ancient Icelandic Saga Voluspo: “The Wise-Woman’s Prophecy”
Fast move the sons | of Mim, and fate
Is heard in the note | of the Gjallarhorn;
Loud blows Heimdall, | the horn is aloft,
In fear quake all | who on Hel-roads are
Thomas Bulfinch: Simonides
On one occasion, when the poet was residing at the court of Scopas, king of Thessaly, the prince desired Simonides to prepare a poem in celebration of his exploits, to be recited at a banquet.
Michael T. Young: The Spoils of War
A little girl grips the one toy she was
allowed to carry away through crowds
stumbling together from their homes.
Arlene Weiner: My Desk Chair
Female, useful, you keep your dignity though your lap’s full of odd socks, haphazard mending. You were old sixty years ago, dressed in Goodwill’s sad maroon stain, scarred with nailholes … Continue reading
David Kirby: The Little Sisters of the Sacred Heart
I’m wondering if, as I walk by later when the shadows are long,
will their white faces be like stars against their black habits
