Poetry
by Aracelis Girmay.
“Abrigette, evenings you are my head. / I think of you at night & then in sleep, bricks / of your house stacked neatly, your dogs & your cats, / & I wonder if you are one hundred now…”
by Elizabeth J. Coleman.
“If I were a musical instrument, I’d be / a guitar, or violin, one that cries out, / the way the clarinet belted out / Smile When Your Heart is Breaking…”
by Wendy Wisner.
“is out the window, along with a tinge /
of yellow on the oak trees. Last night I dreamt / I took my college job back—typing, data entry—”
by Maya Klauber.
“I awake in a hospital bed to what could /
only be a thousand tiny jellyfish infusing /
my veins. Typical. I came here to be healed, / and now I’ve got a jellyfish problem.”
by Brenna Working Lemieux.
“Never mind that her fingers bow backwards, / they’re so lithe, that the bones below her skin / spoke like umbrella ribs, that the bible’s onion-skin / pages arch at her touch…”
by Floyd Skloot.
“So far this morning has been cool and gray but as she walks backward into the sea, adjusting her snorkel and mask, sunlight appears over Haleakala’s cone…”
by Tim Nolan.
“When he almost died that night— / under the glaring hospital lights— / she stood off in the corner—she was / herself—she would have been fine / if he died that night…”
by Brett Warren.
“All around me, trees and shrubs infringe / on gravestones, while lichens write their stories / over names and dates. Under the ground, / where once I imagined only the remains…”
by Catherine G. Wolf.
“Some of us limped, and some drove motorized wheelchairs / in the graveyard, and those who had still had voices sang…”