Cynthia Atkins: When Harry Met Sally
A light quaked on earth, because when the waitress
gasped and blushed, we gasped and blushed,
sitting in the plush dark aisles to our interiors.
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.
Sydney Lea: La Bella Vita
We oddly felt we’d come home when, having left behind the dreadful heat and crowds of Rome, we settled into a rented house in Umbria, a sturdy little structure built in 1434
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Untoward Dreams
Have you ever dreamt you had sex with someone
you aren’t remotely interested in,
like a guy you work with or one of your husband’s friends
Meg Pokrass: Three Poems
When I said, I miss America
I meant that what is nestled in my brain feels like a harbor.
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.
Tony Hoagland: Sweet Ruin
Maybe that is what he was after,
my father, when he arranged, ten years ago,
to be discovered in a mobile home
with a woman named Roxanne, an attractive,
recently divorced masseuse.
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?
Video: A Kind Favor
On the magical coast of Central California, a grandmother reflects on a life filled with art, love, and tragedy.
Michael Simms: Sunstar
The mist that covers our mountain
Evaporates and becomes a feeling
That lasts all morning. You lift the spoon
From the sauce and feel the texture
Of the aroma.
Video: Eternity
Valerie and Alan have been married 57 years. Eternity is a look at love that lasts a lifetime, whether they like it or not.
Sydney Lea: Before the Operation
The surgeon assures my wife and me:
“a little scrape, then zip! Home-free.”
How did age come on with so little warning?
I woke up in tears early this morning,
then put on an album by the great Art Blakey.
Stuart Dischell: Pleasure Harvest
Nights were difficult when her absence curled beside him,
A long-legged question no longer to be answered.
