John Guzlowski: Fear
You could hear the fear in my mom’s voice. She feared everything, the sky in the morning, a drink of water, a sparrow singing in a dream, me whistling some stupid little Mickey Mouse Club tune I picked up on TV.
Thomas Lux: And Still It Comes
thudding and tearing like footsteps
of drunk gods or fathers; it comes
polite, loutish, assured, suave,
breathing through its mouth
Hayden Saunier: Augury, 2025
Seven black starlings
settle in the sycamore’s bony crown
like an idea taking shape
or a sign we once knew how to read.
Betsy Sholl: Haibun | Tarantula
Our creature, named Slash, also bulked up. He had a taste for crickets we fed each week…
Baron Wormser: The Fury
Politics requires suppleness, the ability to compromise, to fit means to ends, to temper principles for the sake of reaching agreement, to turn burning moral issues into administrative questions, to convert moral enemies into amiable opponents, the duel into a debate.
Jane McCafferty: In the Winter of 2025
Who is making time for you/ who knows/ time is clay/can be shaped/ into bowls/ placed on wooden tables/ under sky/ that is impossible/ to love/
Rachel Hadas: ‘Each bears his own ghosts’
How the classics speak to these days of fear, anger and presidential candidates stalking the land
Connie Post: Auto Immune
One part of the body
turns against the other
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: When She Was Afraid She Wasn’t Good Enough
When fear scuttled through her thoughts
with its eight slender legs; when she recognized
the shiny black body, the bulbous abdomen
Dawn Potter: Mr. Kowalski
1 In last night’s dream I was preparing myself to travel over the Tappan Zee Bridge on a moped at midnight in the sluicing rain. . I would have to … Continue reading
