Al Ortolani: Two Poems
I imagined my mother by a fishpond
with garden rocks and submerged reeds,
a pool stocked with orange comets,
fantails, and spotted carp.
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.
Michele Battiste: 101st Note on Violence
Cast iron: iconic. Romantic
even. Well oiled. Seasoned. But far
too heavy. Fatal. Certainly. If wielded.
Determination or luck.
Dr. Noor Abdalla: Letter to My Husband, Mahmoud Khalil
As she prepares to welcome her first child with husband Mahmoud Khalil, Dr. Noor Abdalla writes to her husband one month after he was unlawfully detained for exercising his free speech rights.
Robert Walicki: Asleep
Another knuckle white morning,
in a neighborhood of slammed doors,
the salt covered cars and trucks in a haze,
saying prayers to the God of paychecks and Friday afternoons.
Video: Love in the Time of Migration
Ronny and Suly are in love. The only problem is that Ronny is in the US, while Suly is in Guatemala.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: The Partners
After thirty years, she knows
he will speak with his mouth full.
He knows her stomach will gurgle
in the silence before they sleep.
Barbara Hamby: Ode to the ‘Messiah’, Thai Horror Movies, and Everything I Can’t Believe
When I decide to go to hear Handel’s Messiah in London
at the composer’s parish church, my husband says
he’d rather see a Thai horror movie, so we plan to meet later
at our favorite Moroccan lair
Joseph Bathanti: Steady Daylight
Today in Heaven,
my father turned 105.
Finally working steady daylight
Toi Derricotte: Not Forgotten
I love the way the black ants use their dead.
They carry them off like warriors on their steel
backs.
Barbara Crooker: Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris
Nearly fifty years ago,
in the wreckage of my first marriage, I lit
a tall white taper, prayed that my husband
would return to himself, keep our family intact,
a prayer that disappeared in the dark vaults
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Red and Speedy
Who can remember all the selves stuffed into the miraculous
sack of skin?
Robert Okaji: Dream Score
I empty my mother’s ashtray of its treasures—
various picks, the broken watch, a mandolin bridge,
that lock of my wife’s hair—then peer through the amber
glass at a distorted day. What looks back at me?
Baruch November: A Gift in the Shallows of the Sea
One night, on Riis Beach,
years ago, I suddenly
proposed to your mother
in the moonlight
