Mary Jane White: Friend, You Count Yourself Faithless,
…the Sea and all her ships
are women you are too certain of —
who would not marry you for love.
Bhikshuni Vijaya: Keep Going
Sometimes the most direct path is not a straight line.
Wendy Mnookin: Celebration
I’ll fill my wedding vase
with deep-veined lilies, harlot asters,
pollen will dust the table
where I mass them every week.
Kristofer Collins: Jack Teagarden Buries Louis Armstrong’s Oriental Strut, Mesa, NM, ca.1926
lifting the tarnished curve of his horn to papery lips, Jack
Teagarden somewhere in 1947, his heart piled up with booze
and debt, but still a suppleness to his mouth, a flash
of something dangerous in the hard set of his jaw
Cristina Peri Rossi: Three Poems (with translations)
The Arabian poets say
that fate is the lurch
of a blind stray camel.
Jim Daniels: Strawberry
the final time I saw my mother
she was trying to find
the last strawberry on her plate