by Lila Dlaboha. “You didn’t come to bed until morning / You opened and closed doors all night / while I slept in the ambient soot…”
by Elizabeth Biller Chapman. “The old man/ plies his trade, his wages earned: a clean boat. / Is labor prayer?”
by Colleen McKee. “As I walked to Lake Divine, I remembered I’d forgotten / To fill my pockets with rocks. I’m the type who forgets…”
by Alicia Ostriker. “Boy, he said, you got to fill a graveyard / before you know this business / and you just did / row one, plot one.”
by Michele Parker Randall. “Would that our breasts were like oysters. / Briny, lustrous. Maybe not filter feeders, / but that they could meditate on the grit / of suicidal cells that will become the nucleus / of a pearlescent globe.”
by Eric Pankey. “Call it an exercise in restraint / The angle of ascent is sharp / Like the sloped ceiling…”
by Laurie Clements Lambeth. “The girl in black dress and tights stands behind the fawn, / hands clasped, their white blur forming almost / a heart.”
by Hal Sirowitz. “one of the benefits of the disease –/ you learn new words. You / also learn new meanings for / old words.”
by Jan Bottiglieri. “like light is / like my speckled skin: brim / and brink. verge…”