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.
Robert Wrigley: Self-Pity
Sometimes, in private—another room at least,
another building all the better—you can bask
in the balm and rage of it, you can as a dog does
roll in it like a dead fish on the grass
Laura McCullough: Another Winter Sunday (with passive aggression)
alone inside
the diminishing body, wanting
any attention he can get
Gary Fincke: Anniversary
“Gary, just you wait,”
My mother promised me ten thousand times,
And I did until this moment, saying
That I’ve woken, love, to some happiness
Travis Lupick: Gabor Maté And The Myth of Normal
Celebrated physician Gabor Maté discusses how our toxic culture is making us ill.
