Dawn Potter: Now that I’m old
now that I don’t have sex every night or carry two fat boys,
one on each hip, up small mountains,
I have to go to exercise class
Danielle DeTiberus: In the Middle of Fucking You, I Pause
Twenty years together and yet
You were new to me again.
Jessica Temple: A Study of Conjugation in Medias Res
And suddenly I wonder exactly how many times this had to happen
for both of us to be exactly here, exactly now.
Jefferson Carter: Life Partner
For convenience, I & my life partner
(the woman formerly known as my wife)
have numbered our arguments.
Video: The Spiritual Exercises
What risks of the heart are worth taking? This is a story of love prevailing against all odds.
Elizabeth Romero: Album
Here are my two sons in 1968
In their father’s arms.
He looks harmless.
They look doubtful and uneasy.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: There Will Be Times
How your arrival is now nothing to her?
And your leaving is nothing to her?
Lisa Zimmerman: Testament
I believe the truth needs no defense.
I believe that feelings might not be facts
but they matter all the same
Peter Makuck: Triggers
That look on his face. After all these years, I’d love to punch him again.
Barbara E. Young: Cousin Jill
I like a woman who can fall
Jack said to Jill.
Joy Gaines-Friedler: Domestic Violence
When she said,
this wasn’t supposed to happen to me,
a tray crashed—I heard someone laugh
(at my own failed marriage?)
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Parentage
I’m from the ocean’s melancholy, dragging
its anchors back & forth, never quiet, never
still, waves so restless they can’t mirror the moon.
Elizabeth Romero: Strawberry Moon
The moon in her lopsided veil
like a hillbilly bride
her face round and pale pink
against the darkening blue.
Audio: Gregory Corso reads his poem “Marriage”
Beat generation poet Gregory Corso reads his classic poem “Marriage” from his book, The Happy Birthday of Death, first published in 1960.
