James Crews: The Slightest Kindness
We were walking the icy streets,
talking about the ways our country
has betrayed us again—promises
unkept, laws broken beyond repair.
Sean Sexton: Heavenward
An orange glow back-lights the sky before dawn
with approaching newness made of blue. The world
still drips from a perfect midafternoon rain arriving
yesterday to carry into dark.
Thomas A. Thomas: While hearing the poet
when love was blue water in a green cathedral
under a new blue sky and the water fell from
cliff stone into sun-sparkled air
Chard deNiord: Erebus
This is the river’s music that still plays
like the wind in its accompaniment
to the only song I know how to sing
CL Bledsoe: Hunting Bigfoot
I expected an overcast sky, perfect
for hiding. Maybe you were
wearing one of those sundresses
that stop my breath.
Stuart Dischell: Love’s Dominion
The cabdriver who is a wit
Does not really know that elephant
Tusks and gold bars are packed inside
Love’s trunk along with the bodies
Of Love’s family. Okay, it’s books…
Linda Stern: At the Jetty
You climbed the jetty leading to the sea,
and I hung back to let you try your skill
at navigating life apart from me
though you were not so far I could not still
reach for you if you slipped and fell.
Lao Yang: “Magnolia” by Michael Simms, translated into Chinese and recited 《玉兰》
Suppose you held what you love so tightly
you broke it
Suppose you let something slip away
Michael Simms: Last Testaments
at dawn you’ll arrive
having thrown your luggage in the River Styx
and we’ll drink from the silver cup of day
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: That Night
like a cage lit by moon in a darkness held at bay
beyond this room where the loud chandelier
lit us as though on a stage where we act our rawest selves
Beth Copeland: Pyre
Enough wood for a bonfire, I say, recalling the night
we torched a dead Christmas tree, drinking white wine and dancing
around the leaping blaze and the dark morning I burned your love
letters in a metal trash can outside, drunk and weeping, liar! liar!
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Petition for this Day
May my modest routines appease me today, I who
raged against them for so long —
Alice Friman: The Nick Poems
Do you know what you’re doing?
and she said yes
though deep in her virginity
she knew nothing
but what she wanted
Louise Bogan: Song For The Last Act
Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook.
