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
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: The Medicine of Surrender
It’s like opening the dictionary
to the word heaven. Or obliteration.
And knowing it’s the same thing.
Michael Simms: Snow
her father sitting alone in his underwear
having stripped off his blackened clothes
and leaving them on the back porch,
white skin of his legs, black dust on his face
Michael Simms: Against Prayer
Okay,
God of crib death
and dirty needles,
of heroin and fentanyl,
God of twisted steel
burning beside the road
Connie Post: Auto Immune
One part of the body
turns against the other
Liza Katz Duncan: The Uncles
I’m forgetting others, I know.
One had a scar near his eye in the shape of a bird.
One, a firefighter, had tattooed the word
mercy, and fed the feral cats.
Michael Simms: Ishmael
I’m not prepared to measure grief
like grains of darkness
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Tonight, When I Turn Right on Ogden
By the time I turn onto the highway toward home
it is fifteen years ago
and my father is sitting in his favorite chair
Keith Flynn: Granularities
Each organ seems like a streetlight in a neighborhood
viewed from the mountaintop at midnight,
going out slowly one by one. “It’s all downhill from
here, Son,” he tells me, “‘til I hit the bottom.”
Daniel Lawless: The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With
Was a cubit long and weighed half as much
As an average newborn U.S. baby.
Judith R. Robinson: I Apologize
My own people, once stalwart as the stars,
must now weep as we, their stunning progeny,
disappear like shadows
into the cracked cement of sweet America
William Wordsworth: Surprised by Joy
An elegy for Wordsworth’s daughter Catherine, who died in 1812, aged three.
Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone (2)
For as long as I can remember
my mother told me how
I should feel, what to eat,
who to date, what clothes
looked good (and bad)
on my shape
Tony Gloeggler: Hardly Talking
I’ll give up and lie,
promise, that yes, his friend
will be back tomorrow.
