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
Video: Hair Tie, Egg, Homework Books
As a model student in her elementary school, 11-year-old Lin Yuqi is assigned to give a speech about her family at the Parent’s Meeting tonight. But after Lin finds out that she shares the same secret with a mischievous classmate, she starts to have second thoughts.
Desne A. Crossley: O Rosie Girl
it was one thing for a white man to bed a black woman, but unthinkable that he would marry her. And it was commonplace for a black woman to be forced to open her legs to her employer or his sons. But Martha married white and returned home with the man!
Wally Swist: Three Poems for Tevis
I discover what remains
is the light that shines through
Tony Gloeggler: Some of the Things
Bean once told me, he never
hit a woman, as if it was a big
accomplishment.
