Robert Okaji: Four Poems
The nine lesions
in my brain have not yet diminished language
receptors. Nor my imagination. But
how will I know when it happens?
José A. Alcántara: To a Friend Who Does Not Believe in God
from the first chord
on the guitar, her body stilled, her face went slack.
For two minutes, she went somewhere else,
somewhere quiet, beautiful, free of pain.
Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across
Yesterday, I was culling through papers to throw out and came across a letter from my mother to her father. She’s trying to cushion the news that no one will tell him. He’s dying of cancer.
Keith Flynn: Granularities
Each organ seems like a streetlight in a neighborhood
viewed from the mountaintop at midnight,
going out slowly one by one. “It’s all downhill from
here, Son,” he tells me, “‘til I hit the bottom.”
Laura McCullough: Hero With Only One Face
He tells me in his diminishing days, death not yet active,
but clearly begun, about his siblings, family shufflings,
foster homes, the orphanage. Who said they would
but then could not, who promised this & forgot that
Elizabeth Gargano: Why We Should Try Talking to the Dead
After my father’s death, my mother kept talking to him.
Paul Christensen: The Journey We All Must Take
When you’re a knee-scabbed, scruffy looking kid, a tree-climbing ruffian hanging from the neighbor’s crab apple tree and running away from some irate neighbor after soaping up his car windshield, on Halloween, you don’t know it but you are the unacknowledged expert of what it means to be living in your pre-pubescent body.
Tony Gloeggler: Social Story
how happy and lucky
it made us feel to know
we had someone we loved
who loved us back
Kari Gunter-Seymour: Heartland Hospice
When I was a kid, sick, he’d sing Hank William’s
Hey Good Lookin,’ call me his best girl.
Alice Friman: All for the Love of You
On the day Daisy just plain died, Kenneth Haydon of Benton “left earth to shake hands with Jesus” and La’Kesha Walker, youngest of six, “passed through the gates of Heaven.” … Continue reading
