Jim Daniels: Strawberry
the final time I saw my mother
she was trying to find
the last strawberry on her plate
Valerie Bacharach: Passover
I lay a Haggadah by a chair,
unoccupied.
Unearth my Seder plate,
place upon it shank bone, egg, parsley,
bitter herbs. My bitter tears.
Megan Merchant / Luke Johnson: Origin Story (An Epistolary Dialogue)
From our window, grosbeaks
and buntings tangle into flight. The hours count
earlier now, because of the way they are lit.
Elizabeth Romero: Album
Here are my two sons in 1968
In their father’s arms.
He looks harmless.
They look doubtful and uneasy.
Fred Everett Maus: Yellow
In the days after, we did not weep in each other’s
presence, nor hold each other, nor say much
about our feelings. It was how we had always been.
Paul Christensen: The Leaden Hat of Fall
Once in a while the tufted sky would break open into dazzling radiance. I would often look up from my reading to behold a waterfall of fiery light, as if the Golden Fleece were hanging in a waterfall shedding all its precious minerals into the valley below.
Video: Nat’s Story | Their Love
Nat experiences oppression, xenophobia and misgendering from their own family. Their mother has a spiritual experience that reveals the importance of honoring their child’s nonbinary identity. The film parallels crossing the US-Mexico border and traversing the gender binary.
Kari Gunter-Seymour: Conflagration
I hoped returning
would spark memories, fill her with light,
the way the heat of day warms the bones.
Gary Fincke: The Double Negatives of the Living
I could talk
Two hours past midnight with
My father in the steelworker
Idiom of his city.
Paul Christensen: A Velvet Gloom Before It Rains
The rain isolates you the way not even silence can.
Dawn Potter: Mother to Son
Always with the video games when you’re sad,
as if the gunshots are manna, or music,
which isn’t to say I think you’re planning
to shoot up a grocery store—no, no
Paul Christensen: The Pandemic Blues
Everyone around here is sluggish. The young woman who checks my purchases off the conveyor belt dabs her eyes and stifles a yawn. She keeps shaking herself awake as the … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: My Mazda and I
The monks of Europe often planted their vines in cemeteries to ward off thieves, and believed you could taste the blood of ghosts when you drank. My mother would sip her wine and look away dreamily and then back at me as if I had come home from a long journey, with the Mazda parked in her driveway.
Paul Christensen: What the Rain Says
She would die soon but neither of us knew that. Right now, the precious hours were dissolving in the pale afternoon light, just as the rain began again.
Vox Populi 