Judith Baumel: Under the Dwarf Apple Tree
Pie, crisp, cobbler, fritter
Donut dumpling darling dearest.
Toi Derricotte: Black Boys Play the Classics
their slick, dark faces,
their thin, wiry arms,
who must begin to look
like angels!
Michael Simms: Mary Jo and Aline
Mornings they loved best
sitting over long breakfast
light slanting over them
Bhikshuni Sama: Without Argument
When I was young, my mother told me that I would find true happiness only in marriage.
Michael T. Young: Two Poems
When you’re not the target
you can ignore the gun.
Linda Nemec Foster: Sean Penn Leaves Ukraine for Safety in Poland
Once, I visited a cemetery there, on the border between Poland
and Ukraine. Stark and beautiful. Green and calm. No dead
man walking there. Not even ghosts. Only the long lines
of graves and rusting crucifixes nailed to trees.
Gerald Fleming: This Beauty
—after Uvalde It comes from nowhere, this beauty: attacks. In the dirt-road alley, walking with my four-year-old grandson, a stone wall, formed & fitted well by human hands, and on … Continue reading
Ruth L. Schwartz: Love Letters from the Late Edge
two women, neither of us young, one of us frankly old,
walking our joy like a large animal
around a city lake
Rachel Hadas: The Seeds
My former student sent me six or seven
little homemade packets—folded paper
labelled and taped. Inside each packet
she’d tucked a few heritage seeds:
squash, lettuce, kale, peas, more I am forgetting.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Lately,
Do you believe at times that a moment chooses
you to remember it entirely & tell about it —
so that it may live again?
Clarissa Scott Delany: Joy
Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail…
Bill Knott: Sonnet
The way the world is not
astonished at you
it doesn’t blink a leaf
when we step from the house
Robert Walicki: The Ride
I thought my grandmother was a badass
after arm wrestling me for a pack of Swedish fish.
Ellen McGrath Smith: An American Dream
I dreamed I bought a gun. At a Rite-Aid.
It was heavy, brightly colored, a girl-gun.
