Jim Daniels: My Security Question
The closet in her room
remains as she left it
clothes losing their dark
interest. Ghosts in the dust.
Kristofer Collins: Looking at the Lake
Where are your
wonderful ideas now? All ten thousand
of them, each one a tiny grain you
let loose in this world.
Barbara E. Young: About the Language. And Inevitable Death
alone could fill all the space
between all the yellow cities on the map with a hollow
more empty than the echo of the emptiest of moved-from homes
Jason Irwin: Ouija Board
I asked When? And How?
I was thirteen. My cousin, twelve.
It said I would be 41.
The same age my mother was that Christmas.
Elvis was 42 when he died. Jesus, 33.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: Ode to Autumn
this is where I can
still see you
in these gray branches
George Drew: Drumming Armageddon
I, too, have friends dead from drugs,
guys I hung out with on my hometown streets
and in the war memorial park with wood railings
we kept falling off, too stoned to balance on.
Barbara E. Young: Blues for the Fisherman
Since the blues ought to be tall birds
wading and wailing
when the sun dies—
let the blues fill its lungs now
Jo McDougall: This Morning
A woman laughs
and my daughter steps out of the radio.
Grief spreads in my throat like strep.
Denise Levertov: Clouds
as if death had lit a pale light
in your flesh, your flesh
was cold to my touch, or not cold
but cool, cooling
George Drew: I Know You’re in Detroit
Aretha, I apologize for having never written a poem
for or about you, not in all the Hit Parades of years
I’ve grooved to you…
Sandy Solomon: Ghazal
A night of ghazals comes to an end to fill with birds.
As the sky blues, their calls braid in New Jersey.
Philip Levine: Red Dust
I do not believe in sorrow;
it is not American.
Jason Irwin: Cucumbers
“I still can’t bring myself to buy cucumbers. He loved them.” she says, but never mentions the car accident, or how she had blamed me for your drinking again…
Vox Populi 