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.
Meg Pokrass: Three Poems
When I said, I miss America
I meant that what is nestled in my brain feels like a harbor.
Byron Hoot: On That Day
In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away.
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.
Linda Belans: The mirror doesn’t lie
Do I look fat
in this outrage?
puffed up?
Stephen Dobyns: Prague
The day I learned my wife was dying
I told myself if anyone said, Well, she had
a good life, I’d punch him in the nose.
How much life represents a good life?
Sean Sexton: Plea
An evening has passed, and a young cow is still
crying among the herd this morning like the widow
in the Bible who wouldn’t leave an ill-tempered
judge alone.
Chard deNiord: On Such An Evening
everything just gets sweeter as I sit under
the maple after working all day in the garden
and listen to the music of silence disguised
as birdsong and breeze in the overstory
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Doors Where I Have Knocked
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Petition for this Day
May my modest routines appease me today, I who
raged against them for so long —
Sandy Solomon: Widow
Now the mockingbird at the mulberry
and its mate on the fence pretend they’re crows
and their caws contend with the noise in my bones
Video: Goodnight, Moon
Stephen Gailule wants closure. After hijacking his father’s ashes, he makes a suburban pilgrimage, trespassing onto the grounds of his childhood home. Things change when the new tenant takes a … Continue reading
Ron Koertge: An Old Farmer
still has a few cows and goats he helped into this world, then fed with a bottle. They follow him everywhere, eyes rolled up in adoration.
Valerie Bacharach: Venice
My husband and I sit in Piazza San Marco, sip overpriced coffee
in morning sun, and at home my friend loses pieces
of herself each hour
