Fred Johnston: With My Father on Broadway in the Rain
I wanted to be back in our hotel room
Looking out the single window from that height
Knowing I could not fall, that if all gave way I could always fly
Majid Naficy: Stomach Ulcer
The night that Father packed his suitcase
To travel to America
I ran to the alley shops
And bought a package of barberry candies
Dion O’Reilly: Luke Johnson’s Heroic Journey
Luke Johnson’s debut poetry collection portrays a dream world linked to a stark reality, where generational trauma is recognized as an artifact of mind, a collection of leaping memories that haunt and possess.
Joshua Michael Stewart: Functional
Because the dead
remind him that splinters in his palms
are gifts, he builds cabinets, chairs, houses.
His life is work, no room for self-indulgence
Mike Vargo: Truck Drivers Who Hitchhike
I met my first hitchhiking truck driver one morning on a freeway near Columbus, Ohio.
Sydney Lea: But-cept
From a half-century ago, I remember wishing my oldest son would continue saying ‘upslide down’ at least until first grade.
Tony Gloeggler: Some of the Things
Bean once told me, he never
hit a woman, as if it was a big
accomplishment.
Larry Levis: Childhood Ideogram
Where did he go, that autumn, when he chose
The chaste, faint ideogram of ash, & I had
To leave him there, white bones in a puzzle
By a plum tree, the sun rising over
The Sierras?
Michael Simms: Against Prayer
Okay,
God of crib death
and dirty needles,
of heroin and fentanyl,
God of twisted steel
burning beside the road
Michael Simms: Sometimes I Wake Early
Last night we took a friend for a walk along the edge
of our mountain. She looked out
over the city, the rivers, the sultry slopes
crowded with sumac and maple
and said So you know where you live
Tony Gloeggler: Goodbye
no one seemed to accept
or understand I love Jesse,
that the way he will never fit
in the world reminds me of me
Baron Wormser: Five Easy Pieces
Bobby has the dis-ease that is bred in the easy-going yet overbearing ways of his nation.
Gary Fincke: Naming the Sky
…because my mother
Has died, wonder if he means to show me
Where she is, how one cluster has reformed
To suggest a melodrama of hope.
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.”
