Cesare Pavese: Landscape II
Starlight on the hill: the fields shine white and clear.
Up there, you couldn’t miss the thieves. Down here, in these ravines,
the vineyard is all darkness.
Audio: Danez Smith reads “not an elegy for Mike Brown”
I am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
Valerie Bacharach: Barbara, I’m Sipping Coffee
My hands have morphed into my mother’s; arthritic knuckles, thin skin, and yesterday I
discovered her Mah Jong set dumped in a guest closet
Robert Cording: Manatees
Tranquil, patient,
they brushed against each other
until, soon enough, they ambled
with their mermaid tails toward the dock
Rosaly DeMaios Roffman: How My Father Does It
Tomorrow, I fly home to teach Prometheus—
that story of saving the universe with fire
and then enduring the eagle punishment
but my raised voice will be for my father
Byron Hoot: Dance Instructor & There Are Reasons
“Now you. Just remember
when you were a bear.”
Diane di Prima: Buddhist New Year Song
it is truth, that we came here, I told you,
from other planets
where we were lords, we were sent here,
for some purpose
Stuart Kestenbaum: Prayer for Joy
Every butterfly knows that the end
is different from the beginning
and that it is always a part
of a longer story
Ellen McGrath Smith: Dream, 2025
brown faces falling toward us, arms
and legs dislocated by updraft, indigenous faces we knew from our daily rounds to buy groceries and tacos
Naomi Shihab Nye: Generations
At the end of an unseasonably warm day
New Year’s Eve 2017
I stood in my kitchen holding
one wooden spoon.
Chard deNiord: Erebus
This is the river’s music that still plays
like the wind in its accompaniment
to the only song I know how to sing
Barbara Crooker: When I Gave Away My Tent
…some protection from sun, snow, rain in this, the very imperfect
twenty-first century where working two jobs isn’t enough to get
an apartment in a country where too much is not enough.
Michael T. Young: How to Read a Poem
The experience of reading a poem should not start in the meaning first, but in the feelings it evokes just hearing those words, in the images, and rhythms carrying you along, much like a good song.
