Miriam Levine: Invisible Kisses
And survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms, straight as a
bookkeeper’s sum,
the ink indelibly blue, unlike the blessedly changing ocean.
Stephen Dobyns: Laugh
What he wished was to have his ashes flushed
down the ladies’ room toilet of Syracuse City Hall,
which would so clog the pipes that the resulting
blast of glutinous broth would douse the place clean
Molly Fisk: Elegy (for Leah)
her infinite soprano
and my street drawl voicing words that could
depress a saint
Chris Moran: After Reading Akhmatova
What can I name my grief, again, today?
A nickel frozen in the sidewalk?
A tumbling paper bag?
Connie Post: How to Sort the Living from the Dead
Forget all the nonsense
about eyes opened or closed
or breathing
or brain waves
Walt Whitman: When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
Peter Makuck: Seniors
mocking with an ache
that comes with leafdrop, woodsmoke,
and those shots of bourbon that ease
not a thing
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Orchid Room, Phipps Conservatory
Grandma lived to be ninety-three
and wore the fabric of that tale to a soft sheen
with her retelling. Where does the past lie?
Leslie McGrath: The Death of Dogs
In the middle of the night when he thinks
I’m asleep, Bill will weep without sound
shaking the bed like a curse at God
Majid Naficy: I Have Become a Resting Place
And my mother, who at her death
Called out to her sister Ozra,
Has not yet let go of
My own sister’s hand.
Stephen Dobyns: Santiago in Winter
He is gone now, the blind man, tidily dressed
in a suit of dust, with a dusty tie and dark glasses,
who played the clarinet on Paseo Huerfanos,
the paseo of the orphanage…
Joseph Fasano: The Figure
You rise. You turn back to the room and repeat what you know:
The earth is not a home. The night is not an empty bridle…
Peter Makuck: After Work
I’m sorry,she said, but you look
just like my father. He died last month.
She found her cellphone
and showed me a photo that looked
as if I’d taken a selfie.
Roberta Hatcher: By Yellow Lamplight
But what of the happiness they wrought?
Laughter around a table, flavor of onions
and mustard and salt, music to drown the sound
of his weeping. All the gods are fallen.
