Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Hat
That first day I noticed the handsome stranger, I was wearing a skirt and heels, walking delicately down the cracked sidewalks of Shady Avenue. This dressing-up for work was new to me.
Dawn Potter: Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know What Love Is
I think back to those nights in Buck Lane, the melodramas of sex and desire, the intense affections but also the cruelties … the ruthlessness of self-absorption.
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.
Michael Simms: Baron Wormser (February 15, 1948 – October 7, 2025)
Although history will have the final word on who among us is read by future generations, I’ll put my money on Baron. His writing represents the best of the American spirit.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Hermanas
You’re the same, you two, J, my lover, said. Of course you feel an affinity. I stared at the Frida Kahlo self-portrait in his hands. Frida’s soulful sweetness stared back. You … Continue reading
Fleur Adcock: Happy Ending
After they had not made love
she pulled the sheet up over her eyes
until he was buttoning his shirt:
not shyness for their bodies – those
they had willingly displayed – but a frail
endeavor to apologise.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Nostalgia
Nostalgias we share with friends
around a good table, nodding yes, yes, to our
glad sadnesses as we bring back a taste, a kiss,
that one song we will never forget.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Kate’s Pantoum
My best friend shows up two days post mortem.
Her soul not yet departed, she sits on my bed.
The mattress gives with her weight; I feel her shadow.
When I reach for her, she’s gone.
Tony Gloeggler: Larry
Yes, he had already stopped
pirouetting like a clumsy teddy bear every ten steps
or so, stopped reaching down to pull up his socks.
In fact, he hasn’t worn socks in fifteen years.
Video: Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poem Gate A-4
I heard an announcement:
“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately.”
Tony Gloeggler: October
He’s an ex girlfriend’s son
and I’ve known Jesse
since he was five. I decide
not to tell this woman he’s autistic
thinking she can figure it out
if she listens.
Jianqing Zheng: Moonlight
Always after dinner, Yao, who memorized almost all of Beethoven’s musical pieces, played Moonlight in the living room.
Tony Gloeggler: Down by an Old Mill Where a Big Part of Your Heart Lives
…you and Jesse
have a gift. You can both stop time.
He’s autistic and you love the kid,
who’s now a man.
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
