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
Robert Cording: Broken
Now, my brother’s fifty-year marriage
broken off as if their past was
an imposter that had been discovered.
And my best friend’s wife can’t find
the name for husband,
though he sits next to her.
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
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.
Barbara Crooker: Stillbirth
Dear Supreme Court Injustices,
you who are so proud of overturning
Roe vs. Wade. Do you have any idea
what it’s like to lose a child, a wanted child,
one who never got to use her pink lungs,
take in this sweet air?
Arlene Weiner: Attachments
The lesson I draw over and over
is, everything can change
in a moment.
All that you have is lent.
Noelle Canin: War Watching
I know what blood looks like, she said.
I know what a home looks like
after a bomb.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: Two Inaugural Poems
Before I lived in the South I had never
smelled road kill, that sweet sick
that climbs inside your nostrils
and colonizes your brain, so had never
thought about vultures.
