“Love Letters,” “Purple Flowers,” and “Chicago Stars and Hospital Beds”
Kristen DunnNo comfort
in this world
No warmth
rising from the cracks
in this cement ground
Ice breaks
on the surface of the lake
implying your ability to drown
“Cycling,” “Utter,” and “Glass”
Stephanie TrenchardOn the ride to work I try to remember; did I make my bed?
—Wonder if I love myself, wonder if I care about my children’s children
Wonder where every plastic bottle went—each one I have sucked from and sent
on its journey, perhaps to landfill, and What does that pile look like
“Sleeping,” “Elfie and My Mug,” and “The Land II”
Malcolm GlassI think I’m sleeping, night long, more than I think,
And days blur like leaves in a pitch-long fall,
while clocks run on with numbers that always blink,
then flicker backwards. I close my eyes and sink
to dreams…
“Good Old Dad,” “Nuns Fret Not,” and “That’s All Folks”
Jack D. HarveyHad enough of it,
pushing along with
his job and family
and gave up.
Game over.
Good old dad,
always liked trains
and that’s where he went.
“Tree Rings,” “The White Cat,” and “Goodbyes”
Cami DuMayMy skin told me first, when I saw his picture. The cold memory of touch
a frantic messenger, almost swifter
than the optic nerve. My body remembers.
So I got into the shower, ran it scalding, breathed
the vapor like medicine, the mist a place to lose myself,
“Barefoot,” “Reconstructions,” and “Vulcan’s Flames”
Louis FaberHe says his favorite clouds
all wear size seven shoes.
He knows she believes
she once saw a paisley rainbow
and will never forget it.
She wears size seven shoes
and her tears can be torrential,
yet they can still nurture
“Pull,” “The Fall,” and “Moth”
Blake AudenUnsure how many lives I’ve taken.
Hornets, spiders, the boy hardened – unbelonging
in the furling roots.
But this isn’t about the bodies,
it’s their shadows, seeping through the openings,
weighing the bones with dark.
“Black Tambourines,” “Brother Red Gold,” and “Flesh”
Patrick T. ReardonAnd I heard black tambourines, stolen
steel guitars, small-room tubas, forsaken
trumpets, green castanets, kettledrums
of gold, stained-glass window pianos
— the orchestra of the alley,
pavement joyously undefended.
“Contagion,” “Melancholia Covida,” and “Intermission”
Eve HoffmanWho among us has not been infected with COVID
fear? Waking, wanting to vomit but the vomit hangs
burning in our esophagus and we are not certain of the day
of the week or when our toilet paper will run out and if
there will be more in the stores. Who among us does
not fear dying alone, COVID keeping loved ones distant—
“Lake Ontario,” “This Town With One Bridge,” and “A Proctor at the Final Exam”
Sally VenturaYou are launching us in the boat
that you made seaworthy. It scrapes against the
pebbles which shift so reassuringly when the lake
is calm. It is your boat, your day, and we are your
children. We have brought along our families,
all that we have added to your empire.
“Immortality in a Song,” “Meditation,” and “Repose”
Hannah BakerThe song begins—
the first beat calls forth
an aroma of strawberry syrup
from your vape as its smoke
dances with the music, past my nose,
and out through the windows
of your 2012 red Toyota Camry.
“Farewell, My Lovelies,” “A Chameleon Named Silencio,” and “The Unwoke Wizard of Oz”
Robert Eugene RubinoGood riddance, alcohol.
Good riddance mary-jane.
Good riddance hashish and uppers and downers.
Good riddance Timothy Leary … we hardly knew ye.
Good riddance to
those bottles of quenching cold ice-cold cottonmouth-inducing beer & ale
and those steins of on-tap room-temp Guinness stout
— it’s good for you the billboard said and the billboard wouldn’t fib.
“Cancer: A Paean,” “Legacy,” and “The Three Nuns: A Contrapuntal for Voice and Canvas”
Olga DuganAbditive—that’s you,
sneaky sniper, taking us out
more than a hundred types of ways.
A name change per each organ,
tissue, cell you invade…bronchus,
lung, prostate, colon, uterus…
From the shade you surface
“Old Bookstores,” “World,” and “Spoor”
Andrew Fieldare sad places, where the dead wait to be loved.
A teenager in the poetry section
sits on a red milk carton,
her black lipstick like an opera,
pulling one book down after another
in a frenzy of polite quiet.
“To the Dead Man Living Inside My Knee” and “What I Thought Was Pollution Was Really God”
Jamie L. SmithA careless dictator, most days
I do not think of you
unless you protest, beating your fists
against the walls of my flesh
when I’ve danced you too hard
or damp February
clenches your teeth
into a knot of hot fury. Please
“If These Walls Could Talk,” “Images of Night,” and “Overheard on a Train”
Russell WillisIf only these walls could talk
we wonder
What might goad their reluctant tongues?
Wondered more often
by those who would be betrayed or wounded by the
small talk or gloating of these walls
“Cry of the People”
Michael McQuillanThe netherworld’s sordid secrets, disclosed,
brook no remorse for the dead nor regard for
those barely alive. Brutal eruptions
punctuate detention’s boredom. Nor does night’s
darkened cell ease despair. With 6000 not 3000
confined to have a cell is rare.
“Gothic Gloves,” “Pass on the Space Needle,” “Napping Bulldozers”
Sterling WarnerRomancing your looking glass reflection
northern lights pierce fractured windowpanes
frame my mirrors with supercharged
atoms displaying rhythmic finesse
each particle a proficient flamingo soloist
in step with a blinking star metronome
“As Charged,” “My dad,” and “One Last Thing”
Steven DeutschThe jury found you guilty
in just an hour and fourteen minutes.
Long enough for bathroom breaks
and a single show of hands.
Your public defender
advised you to cop a plea,
but mom borrowed a suit and black shoes
and dressed you as an innocent man.
“Plus Ca Change,” “Telling” and “About Last Night”
Julie BeneshThat swagger-daddy On the Red Line el
asks the auntie if she’s Spanish
she’s Italian he requests a sex act:
poor lady won’t muster insult or outrage
and we roll our eyes on her behalf.
“Around the Final Bend” and “Lovely Scene”
Kate AdamsSong, take these rhymes and carry them abroad.
Lift your little wings and beat and beat
like in some Disney film. The Greeks had gods,
the Christians, Christ. We moderns have the heat
of giants booming from the screen. Our stars
take close-up orbits, Venus kissing Mars.
“Muscat of Alexandria,” “La Porte d’Enfer,” “Omar Khyamm’s Restaurant in the Sequoia Hotel”
Stephen BarileOn Temperance Avenue,
Southeast of the city of Fowler,
Is a ten-acre vineyard
Planted to Muscat of Alexandria vines,
In the true sense of the old world.
Near the railroad tracks and old highway,
Raisin packing, and packaging plants,
And their chain-link fences.
Hundreds of solitary vines
Over one-hundred years old…
“4 + 18 = 5,” “Posse Comitatus,” “The Rape and the Lock”
Ailish NicPhaidinGerald awakens to a shrill alarm
Gouging out his eardrums at 4:30 each morning
Rousing from a delicate slumber
He slinks into the bathroom to prepare his wan body for the day.
Rose arrives from work at 7:30 a.m. as she does six days every week
Like an invisible shroud of gossamer her soulless fragility moves…
“First Morning in Town,” “Lake House,” and “Trail That Has No Name”
John BrantinghamIn the morning,
I edge my Saturn past
the horse carriage.
I hear the hoofs clack
over the sound
of my engine.