Jennifer L. Freed: Even in Unkind Times
I just saw her last summer, sat two rows behind her
on a folding chair. Stared at the knobs of spine
protruding from beneath her tied-back hair
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Like a Friend
I didn’t land. I fell and I fell and I fell.
At first as I plummeted, I feared the landing,
imagining an imminent crash. Then,
I fell through nights and middays. Fell through
kitchen floors and highways.
Sydney Lea: Remorse
Do you ever recall some minor misdemeanor or even one you committed only in mind, and –however absurdly– half believe it contributed to a disaster?
Ellen Foos: Letting Assisted Living Have a Say
We are both losing something.
I am losing him,
he is losing himself.
James Crews: After Receiving Bad News from a Friend
To offer what we can,
even when a friend lives far away,
to say: I will hold you inside myself
as you pass through this new gate.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: ‘She had a horror he would die at night’
She had a horror he would die at night.
And sometimes when the light began to fade
She could not keep from noticing how white
The birches looked and then she would be afraid
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
