Poetry
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 Amanda Auchter.
“Tucked beneath my mother’s shirts /
and camisoles, a paper bag / of prayer cards, I find…”
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 Abba Belgrave.
“there will be / no burial burn /
the body cancer / cratered toss…”
by Nicholas Yingling.
“You know / drowning is as much a predicament of time / as water.”