Jason Irwin: Two Poems
the bejeweled pimp, flashing his Come to Daddy
devil’s grin, at the midwestern girl with stars
in her eyes whose just ridden for over thirty hours,
trying to escape her life
Sydney Lea: Final Visit
He kept awkwardly laying a hand across his forehead, trying to cover his eyes. He’d done that a lot by then. Ever the iron-butt Yankee, he meant to hide his tears, though … Continue reading
Tony Magistrale: Family Man
For forty years a compliant prisoner
in his own home. Work his addiction and escape,
his only refuge against the daily humiliations,
the tedious boredom, the inane dinner chatter.
Robert Hayden: Those Winter Sundays
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
H C Palmer: Two Poems
My father believed the bedrock beneath our ranch—
once an immense sea—
was still alive, that natural rhythms persisted
in its sluggish consolidation.
DeWitt Henry: Forces of Nature | A Dream Retold
In my dream, the poor people, on the contrary, many of who are Korean, have lost everything, all of their children. They have had no warning.
Tony Gloeggler: Minimum Wages
He’d talk about the summer
he worked behind a counter,
slicing meat, creating fully
loaded heroes like works of art.
Byron Hoot: On That Day
In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away.
Fred Everett Maus: Growing Up
Until I left for college, I lived in the same home with my mom and dad. The house was built in 1924. My grandfather was the first owner.
Frank Lehner: Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey
Pops never said much, but there he was in his T-shirt and loose boxers telling Jessers about the Easter Tuesday night he lost his mother and taking the streetcar to go to work because there was nothing to do until the next day, and the plant owner only gave two days off for deaths.
Tony Hoagland: Sweet Ruin
Maybe that is what he was after,
my father, when he arranged, ten years ago,
to be discovered in a mobile home
with a woman named Roxanne, an attractive,
recently divorced masseuse.
Ma Yongbo: Three poems translated from Chinese
The horse drawn cart hasn’t gone far, it will carry away
the love of the land, and one or two shy grasshoppers.
At this moment, her hanging sickle
reflects the white light of winter arising in the distance.
Steven Ratiner: Fathering
After the stroke, when language
froze over in his throat, he had a hard time
with the snow–– He couldn’t say,
and the sky wouldn’t stop saying
Video: Goodnight, Moon
Stephen Gailule wants closure. After hijacking his father’s ashes, he makes a suburban pilgrimage, trespassing onto the grounds of his childhood home. Things change when the new tenant takes a … Continue reading
