Poetry
by Laura Apol.
“on her desk / there was a handwritten list of guns / there was the cash receipt for the gun…”
by Deborah Murphy.
“Late June fields greening / under a mottled sky. / An oriole slashes orange /
against a shingled Cape Cod.”
by Rachel Ullah.
“Bloodstains left / on the sidewalk / Body bags, / Yellow tape, / Why don’t you think about the consequences / You’re going to have to face?”
by Margaret Kogan.
“The smell is like nothing else. / Sickeningly sweet and kind of smoky, / like something burning and rotting at the same time, / it filled my father’s hospital room / and stuck to our clothes and nostrils / long after he died.”
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.”