Meg Pokrass: Three Poems
When I said, I miss America
I meant that what is nestled in my brain feels like a harbor.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more.
Joan E. Bauer: Lovers and Other Strangers
We’re all strangers. But after a while,
you get used to it. You become deeper
strangers. That’s a sort of love.
Dawn Potter: Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know What Love Is
I think back to those nights in Buck Lane, the melodramas of sex and desire, the intense affections but also the cruelties … the ruthlessness of self-absorption.
Audio: Call Me Antifa
Inspired by the spirit of the Greatest Generation who fought fascism in World War II, this song celebrates love over hate, peace over violence, and liberty over authoritarianism.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: What I Know of Love When Times Are Dark
And if you don’t
know how to pray,
then perhaps you are doing it right.
Barbara Crooker: Two Poems for Summer
And tomorrow, another hot one,
and that sweet juicy sun
will pop up again, staining
the horizon red, orange, gold.
Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Michael T. Young: What the World Waits for
Like that day I sat in the yard
under the braids of summer light,
reading, weighing thought
against thought for what was right
or what was wrong
Barbara Hamby: Ode on My Mother’s Handwriting
Her a’s are like small rolls warm from the oven, yeasty,
fragrant, one identical to the other, molded
by a master baker, serious about her craft, but comical, too,
smudge of flour on her sharp nose
Fleur Adcock: Happy Ending
After they had not made love
she pulled the sheet up over her eyes
until he was buttoning his shirt:
not shyness for their bodies – those
they had willingly displayed – but a frail
endeavor to apologise.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Nostalgia
Nostalgias we share with friends
around a good table, nodding yes, yes, to our
glad sadnesses as we bring back a taste, a kiss,
that one song we will never forget.
George Herbert: Love (III)
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
Louise Bogan: The Changed Woman
The cracked glass fuses at a touch,
The wound heals over, and is set
In the whole flesh, and is not much
Quite to remember or forget.
