Pablo Otavalo: Scorched Earth, Illinois
the bears never seemed to wander
far, they just milled around town, knocked down
a few garbage cans and waited to be brought back
to their pens
Thomas McGuire: Rust
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. —Matthew 6:19-21 . Rust ruins metal everywhere. Dad, you would’ve fought … Continue reading
Joseph Bathanti: Steady Daylight
Today in Heaven,
my father turned 105.
Finally working steady daylight
Michael Simms: Strange Meadowlark
years later jazz, a free communal experience
embodying love, saved me just as poetry saved me
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: I Genitori Perduti
Souls transmigrated maybe
from Hudson’s shrouded shores
across all the silent years—
Which one’s my maybe mafioso father
Toi Derricotte: Not Forgotten
I love the way the black ants use their dead.
They carry them off like warriors on their steel
backs.
Majid Naficy: Ruthless Gods
I detest the world
Which has given its heart
To ruthless gods
David Kirby: Shorty Boudreaux
He really was short.
He’d get on a box and disappear under the hood
and jump down half an hour later,
grinning and wiping his hands on a rag,
and ask me about school.
Larry Levis: Family Romance
Abstaining clouds that passed, & kept
Their own counsel, we
Were different, we kept our own counsel.
Tony Gloeggler: Fade Away
In 1964, my father and uncle
loaded the U HAUL and we left
Bed Stuy with all the other white
people and moved to Long Island.
Baruch November: A Gift in the Shallows of the Sea
One night, on Riis Beach,
years ago, I suddenly
proposed to your mother
in the moonlight
Richard Krawiec: The Eyes of Hiroshima
My father was a sailor in the first group of ships to land in Hiroshima after the atomic bombs were dropped in WWII.
Margo Berdeshevsky: God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own
He says — you will let go he will let go the branch when he is
Ready I nod, yes, he says, climbing the hill from the sea
Where he has gone to wash distance and salt before it comes
Tony Gloeggler: Anyway
After we dropped dirt
on my father’s coffin
the long line of cars
drove back to the house.
