John O’Keefe: Amo, Amas
Amo, Amas, I love a lass
As a cedar tall and slender;
Sweet cowslip’s grace is her nominative case,
And she’s of the feminine gender.
Charles Bukowski: Consummation of Grief
I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
Elizabeth Kirschner: Time and Again
As the fire taught the house how to surrender, the dolls, they screamed, not me, oh they screamed like ashes that smelled of church pews.
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: A Good Man
To this day, my sister and I wonder if Dad
Got it right. “Fear,” he explained years later,
“Is sometimes the only tool.”
Patricia Clark: Riverside Ghazal
By the rivers of America, we wept these willows.
Wayne Karlin: Because You Are Not Here
Because you are not here
you are always here
Barbara Hamby: The Tawdry Masks of Women
and when I see myself
in bus windows or store glass, the shock never wears off,
for I recognize myself and see a stranger at the same time
Video: The Bridge | Shaun Johnston & Amber Marshall (from Heartland)
Walk me over this bridge
River so deep and so wide
Just walk me over the bridge, my darling
We’ll get to the other side
Pablo Neruda: Oda a las nubes (Ode to clouds)
you are the celestial girls,
silk in the sun, white blooms,
the sky’s youth
Molly Fisk: Full Flower Moon Lunar Eclipse
It was me, stepping out the front door
every six or eight minutes to look up
into a cloudy sky that darkened
and opened.
Majid Naficy: The Day Chador Is Not Forced
The day will come when my sisters
No longer wear forced chadors.
Let that day be in summer
So that we can go for a picnic.
John Balaban: Two Poems
Three men dancing. Not drunk, just immensely amused
knowing that soon enough there would be only the wind
shushing its sad music along an empty shore.
Julie Bruck: The Last Two Jews of Kabul
When his roommate finally expired at eighty,
Zebulon said he was relieved to be rid of Isaak.
The pair had held out in a decaying synagogue
under Mujahedeen, Taliban, Americans, more Taliban.
Edward L Greenstein: When your principles are at stake, take inspiration from Job
The deity astonishingly salutes Job when he speaks his truth to the deity’s power.
