John Samuel Tieman: Lauds
the Templar strolled the cloister
after the dawn office
the sky was a sort of orange
like he had seen in the East
BJ Ward: First Thanksgiving
A chair was never emptier
than on the first Thanksgiving
after my father died.
Sydney Lea: Hole
He says even in the joint they didn’t have no trouble
gettin product
and once when they couldn’t, why, a bunch of them
shot up whatever, fools
that they all was
Jeffrey Harrison: The Light in the Marsh Grass
we gave up trying to explain it, gave ourselves
to it—as if we had ingested some hallucinogen
that opened our eyes to what was there all along
Stephen Dobyns: Leaf Blowers
That autumn morning he awoke to the crying
of lost souls that quickly changed to the roar
of leaf blowers up and down the street
David D. Daniels III: Black Church has been getting ‘souls to the polls’ for more than 60 years
To King and other civil rights leaders, the Black Church was a key institution within the pro-democracy movement.
W.S. Merwin: Another River
he arrived just as
an evening was beginning and toward the end
of summer when the converging surface
lay as a single vast mirror gazing
upward into the pearl light
Rachel Hadas: Do You Believe in Ghosts?
…now is the moment for this query,
when every encounter’s eerie
and we can only recognize
familiar faces by their eyes.
Donald Krieger: Unveiling
I listened to the learned
seeking meaning, hundreds crowded
into the Beth Shalom basement,
police in armor at the entrance.
Judith Sanders: A Mourner’s Kaddish
We must have forgotten thee,
o Jerusalem,
because our tongues cleave
to the roofs of our mouths
and our right hands
have lost their cunning.
Gail Langstroth: How to Fill-out your Mail-in Ballot
And I Saw. The Lamb opens one of the seven seals
and I hear one of the four animals with
a thunderous voice cry
Ariel Dorfman: Sending Trump to Hell
For some time now, I’ve wanted to send Donald Trump to Hell. I mean this literally, not as a figure of speech. I want him to inhabit the palpable, sensory Hell that religions have long conjured up with scenes of sulfur, damnation, and screams of perpetual pain from those who once caused grievous harm to their fellow humans.
