Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Erecting Stones
Here, in Congo Town, I’m picking up debris
from twenty years ago. Some remnants of bombs
and missile splinters, old pieces of shells from
the unknown past.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: The Prayers
I had not imagined drowning
was the way to reach the shore.
Video: Kae Tempest performs More Pressure | Grace
I used to think
Things were so clear
I was so near to nowhere
Christina Rossetti: A Dirge
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
Fred Everett Maus: Listening to Bach, Three Days after a Shooting
It’s quiet in the room where I am writing.
Bright afternoon sun flows in, oblique,
glorious light in these days of mourning,
perfection pouring down on a shattered world.
Barbara Crooker: Poem For My Birthday
Send me a heart of gratitude for this long afternoon
of goldenrod light falling across my typewriter
and a sky so blue I want to bite it like an apple.
Gerard Robledo: Off Brand Man
No woman
can resist a man who cooks for them,
my brother said. It’s your only hope to find love
Denise Duhamel: Ego
I just didn’t get it— even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand and a lemon (the moon) in the other, her favorite student (the sun) … Continue reading
Lasse Söderberg: The dead children in the Tajo River
They have left the city
and their blind games
under the white bone of the sun
John Crowe Ransom: Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond
The lazy geese
Allen Stein: Contact Trace
they’d determined that he’d picked up the Covid
while getting fitted for tortoiseshell bifocals
to replace the pair his puppy had chewed
Elizabeth Romero: The Next Big Thing
Oh, beautiful death from the sky!
Please, do not strike me
Or my dark tree.
Neil Shepard: Local Freeze
Flat lines of black clouds
rolled over the Everglades, pelting the land with cold rain,
then, briefly, almost impossibly, hail, over the wetlands and dredged
fields, reminding us how fragile the grapefruits and oranges.
Toi Derricotte: In Knowledge of Young Boys
i knew you when your connections
belonged only to yourself,
when you had no history
to hook on to
