Baron Wormser: Thought Nothing
The Separatists, as the religious settlers of New England were denominated, saw themselves as people similar to the Israelites in the Bible, people who were in a covenant with the Lord and who faced an enemy who stood in the way of occupying destined land.
Mary Jane White: Rain, In Riverview Cemetery, Martins Ferry, Ohio
The rain
Already hangs a grey shawl in front of the blue domes of the Ohio
Greek Orthodox church, standing cheek by jowl by an industrial dairy.
Nasser Rabah: We Are Not Iron
We are not iron, O God, so that we can be melted down every year. We are not copper or lead that they fire among the armies and leave behind after the end of the war as mere ammunition and ashes.
Claudia Lefko: Dear Refaat Alareer | A Letter of Gratitude
As per your wishes we’re striving to live—hopefully a deeper and more reflective life, including a life of action against the genocide in Palestine.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Hermanas
You’re the same, you two, J, my lover, said. Of course you feel an affinity. I stared at the Frida Kahlo self-portrait in his hands. Frida’s soulful sweetness stared back. You … Continue reading
Byron Hoot: Two poems about beginning and ending
The death of my father is nearly a month
away – 31 years. The haunting of longing
has begun.
Arlene Weiner: For My Husband Who is Depressed at the State of the World
Lilacs perfume the city air. Smoke from wildfires
turns sunsets glorious. Talons tear the breast of the dove.
The world changes. The world doesn’t change.
Michael T. Young: What the World Waits for
Like that day I sat in the yard
under the braids of summer light,
reading, weighing thought
against thought for what was right
or what was wrong
Alison Luterman: What I Learned
singing’s made of sweat and spittle,
tears and snot, hot breath,
and the soggy crumb of a potato chip left
in a back corner of your unflossed tooth
Baron Wormser: Dark Time
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
Sean Sexton: Planting Aeschynomene Seed
It pours from a muslin sack like sunlight
through a cracked window shade, fifty pounds
to a metal washtub, old as your footsteps.
Abby Zimet: We Shall Not Be Moved Chap. 784
50 faith leaders gathered at the ICE facility to link their arms, block the entrance, demand information on conditions inside and declare, “This is not acceptable” – after which they were set upon by goons.
Mary B. Moore: Amanda and the News, c. 2016
I’m old as stones and not as solid.
Gloria fritters a while
and fiddles my left eardrum,
a tickle not a hum.
Thomas McGuire: Garden Plots
I’ve come to half believe what Ho Chi Minh
said about his need for more poets
who could lead a charge, sharpen bayonets.
