Timons Esaias: No Boat
There is no boat there
on Ararat’s strong shoulders.
Ignore the astronaut
and take my word.
There is no boat there
and no trees, either.
Byron Hoot: On That Day
In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away.
Christine Gelineau: Artificial Intelligence
It was Kristallnacht that motivated
my mother-in-law’s parents
to put her and her younger sister
on the Kindertransport train
to England
Edward J. Curtin Jr: A Luminous Tapestry of Truth
The martyred heroes’ tales recounted in this book are sorely needed now when the survival of our planet is at stake.
Walt Whitman: I Hear America Singing
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown…
Charles Davidson: Are We Prepared for the Knock on the Door?
Brutality has become ICE’s signature policy. Trump’s “barbed-wire” signature has dictated the ungodly means and ungodly ends of what rapidly has become the Trumpian version of the Nazi Gestapo and the Communist NKVD.
Michael Simms: Last Testaments
at dawn you’ll arrive
having thrown your luggage in the River Styx
and we’ll drink from the silver cup of day
Barbara Crooker: Praise Songs for Autumn
Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning’s quick coffee
and evening’s slow return.
Louise Bogan: Simple Autumnal
The measured blood beats out the year’s delay.
The tearless eyes and heart, forbidden grief,
Watch, the burned, restless, but abiding leaf,
The brighter branches arming the bright day.
Susan Kelly-DeWitt: Sunrise at the River
The light steps forth out of the heatand darkness, out of the stillnessand ghost-lit world while I feel the dead staring downat me from some other shoreas if I was … Continue reading
James Wright: Sappho
Fire does not rest on iron, it drifts like a blue blossom
And catches on my breath;
Coiling, spinning, the blue foam of the gas fire
Writhes like a naked girl
Dawn Potter: Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know What Love Is
I think back to those nights in Buck Lane, the melodramas of sex and desire, the intense affections but also the cruelties … the ruthlessness of self-absorption.
Mark Danowsky: The Rocky Mountain Locust Surge
One story is about the farmer
who just started running
right into the black mass
