Doug Anderson: We Get Old, We Get Sick
How we stumble, are glib
in the face of our fear
when we might show
our own raw heart
Terry Blackhawk: So Here
So here I’ve gone and reframed your painting, the one of the street with its tilted telephone poles, the street that led me into sleep so often now bordered by an eggplant purple, very trendy and advised by the decorator to pick up the purples and greens of other pieces in my room…
Abayomi Animashaun: History Lesson
On the wall is a map of places, the so-called explorers
— Mungo Park and the rest of them —
Discovered. But did they know
Of my longing to kiss you tonight?
Dawn Potter: For David
The world is personal,
Dawn says. And what heart-scalded person
would think otherwise
Michael Simms: What Holds Us Together Keeps Us Apart
The dirty child at our border
who walked 500 miles
sharing a pair of shoes
with her brother
William Butler Yeats: Adam’s Curse
We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena: Two Poems
In a country nobody can locate
on the map, the birds
migrate to the north
with the ashes of trees on their wings
Arlene Weiner: Dead Russian Soldier
My father lived in the land
where your son lies unburied,
now wasted by fire once again,
my kin were slaughtered there,
interred unhonored.
John Lawson: Two Dreams
She is one of that generation the heroes fought
And died for, inheritors of prim suburban homes
Purchased by the drowned
Toi Derricotte: For my unnamed brother (1943-1943)
you live this
life i’ll live the
next
Video: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | Red Right Hand
Past the square, past the bridge
Past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm
Comes a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with
A red right hand
Bhikshuni Mahaprajapati: What mother doesn’t see a Buddha in her child?
To care for all the children, without exception, as though each will someday be the one to show us all the way home: that is the Path.
Edward Harkness: My Father’s Uncles Doing Time
Their sorry, sorry asses. Bad year, 1929.
Neither one is yet 30 in the grim prison photos
I received from the state archives.
