Poetry
by John Willson.
“Belongings: The short-sleeved blouse, /
its paisley rayon desperate / to breathe light in your form; / the comb that hungers / for the pull of your hair; / the wristwatch, clicking in stir…”
by Nellie Hill.
“To understand the heart / you’ve got to memorize arteries, vessels, / and which goes where, which is red / and which is blue, what’s likely to pop open–“
by Matthew Ladd.
“The Pacific Ocean, to a child of three, /
sounds like a push-broom in his mother’s kitchen. / Life took us elsewhere: like other boys, I learned…”
by David Woo.
“The high sweep of waves, like the bulging arc / of a grand piano, and the silence of deer in a field of / lupine and trefoil, and the underthrum…”
by Elspeth Jensen.
“Take this, take it with crackers or bread. Do not. Do not. Do not / chew or crush. You are pregnant, may become pregnant, or are / breast-feeding.”
by Charlene Fix.
“What my eyes see reminds me of under-exposed / negatives from my bygone wet photography days, / days replete with eyes—the camera’s, the enlarger’s,
mine—”
by Nylah Lyman.
“For months, her determined hands
/ coaxed the sickness up and out of my lungs / until it came to rest, eventually, in her own—”
by Rachel Hadas.
“I’m angrily packing to fly to my dying brother. / My husband stands and watches. As a tree / might look at someone, he looks down at me.”
by Michael M. Weinstein.
“I wanted you, desert / you red incorruptible // parchedness perched on / the earth’s bone shoulder…”