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.
Helen Pletts: In the Presence of Things Flying Slower in a Grey Dusk (4 Poems in English and Chinese)
Rain from the Tang dynasty has re-surged,
all feelings gather in a fine mist, and lighter still is the joy of rain as a witness
to the landscape of fear fleeing like mist up the mountainside
Ma Yongbo: Three poems for Helen Pletts in English & Chinese
No one can walk here,
save shy deer, save wind and rain,
save those invisible wings
that can gently lift the whole garden
up to the constellations.
Judith Sanders: Bubbe and Zayde Take Me to the Ice Capades
I danced past the hospital playroom
where bald children rode tricycles,
because you, my son, would get well.
Chana Bloch: A Marriage
Theirs was the one with the noisy bedsprings.
How does a child solve a riddle like that?
Scritchity-screech
—are they fighting again?
Robert Okaji: Four Poems
The nine lesions
in my brain have not yet diminished language
receptors. Nor my imagination. But
how will I know when it happens?
Sandy Solomon: Making Soup
Who would have guessed before this year
how cheerful this simple chore would feel
now that the sick room’s silence starts
beyond the swinging kitchen door.
Paul Christensen: A Diary of Winter
The cold came in silent as an owl. The fences stared out at the clenched landscape with gaping eyes, unlocked gates, a path already flattened out in anticipation of the coming snow.
Jennifer Horney: Health risks are rising in mountain areas flooded by Hurricane Helene and cut off from clean water, power and hospitals
Contaminated water is one of the leading health risks, but residents also face harm to mental health.
Video: How to Cultivate a Healthy Gut Microbiome with Food
Food for gut health: An unhealthy intestinal biome is a major contributor to heart disease and other illnesses.
Tony Gloeggler: Honestly
I’ll place a bowl of Cheez-Its
in her lap, drop a Milk Dud
or Jordan Almond, spoon melon
into her mouth.
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
Jennifer Franklin: As Antigone
I will not walk away.
The moment the nurse
pressed your splotched
body into my arms,
your needs fixed my fate.
Cynthia Atkins: Hairbrush
He’d fall asleep on my chest, breath light as a falling leaf.
Now, he glides the bristles down my neck— He gently fluffs
the tufts, like airing the pillows.
