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.
Brad Davis: On the Way to Putnam
in late summer’s
westering light,
his yellow cornfields and,
toward the middle,
that lone, misshapen tree
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
Joseph Bathanti: Maz’s Homer
Sister Ann Francis, my teacher, whom I do not like at all, though she will not prove the worst of them, slips us word that Sister Geralda, the ferocious school principal, who teaches eighth grade, has granted amnesty for the last ten minutes of the school day. We are to hurry home to witness the climax of the World Series.