Adam Patric Miller: Passing Through The Intersection
It made no sense to see him. He wore the leather coat he used to wear, an 8-ball on the back. Maybe this happens when you don’t acknowledge death.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Three Pantoums for My Sister
Enough already! My sister says..
I can’t bear to watch you anymore.
I know she’s right. But I can’t stop.
I mean where would I put my sorrow?
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.
Paul Christensen: A Diary of Winter
The cold came in silent as an owl. The fences stared out at the clenched landscape with gaping eyes, unlocked gates, a path already flattened out in anticipation of the coming snow.
Ma Yongbo: I Have Always Been in Love With You (English and Chinese)
Sometimes I suddenly stop on the road
feel a breeze brushing my ears
That’s you passing by
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
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Brief
It happens so often: there — somewhere
in a line, waiting room or store — I see you,
& it’s something about your work-wrecked
hands, cow-lick, the perfect curl of your lips
Sydney Lea: A Monk After Dark
One boot sags like him in his cubicle’s corner.
He drops the other to the floor with a grimace.
Valerie Bacharach: Chaos
There is no word for parents who have lost a child. Our language is chaotic. We are not widowed or orphaned. We are without, we are incomplete.
Elizabeth Gargano: Why We Should Try Talking to the Dead
After my father’s death, my mother kept talking to him.
Baron Wormser: Ghosts
All the chatter about “family values” presupposes that women pick up whatever difficulties they are faced with and go forward with a happy, maternal smile. Seduced and abandoned does not exist in such an aggressively wholesome universe.
Rachel Hadas: Ghost guest
I sometimes think I recognize the face
of my own death. Knowing it is nearer
makes me feel it ought to be familiar,
a neutral guest I’ve seen somewhere before.
