Poetry
by John Kay.
“Blood draws dissolve into Christmas lights, / veins dizzy with the latest medications.”
by Katie Chaple.
“The other man holds the letters /
to his nose, inhaling deeply. /
One letter after another he lifts and smells, / making two piles.”
by Adam Scheffler.
“After today’s rain / all that’s left / of the planets / green and pink / they’d chalked / on the sidewalk…”
by David Lehman.
“In the hospital there was time / to read to dream to act / to read Freud’s dream book on his couch / and how his best thoughts came to him / in the hospital during / World War I for example…”
by Ted Morrissey.
“Your left-behind clothes still occupy closets and / clotheslines in the basement. She refuses to / donate them away, / insisting that family may want / them (implying should want them).”
by Alison Townsend.
“I didn’t know / one went grey down there too. / Hadn’t imagined / that even sex / might lose its color.”
by Philip Levine.
“A row of corrugated gray huts /
hunkering down in the November rain. /
Across the way the fire burns night and day / though unseen now in first light.”
by Hal Sirowitz.
“When the Parkinson’s medication /
wears down, I turn into Cinderella. / My means of transportation / slows down to the speed of / a pumpkin pulled by mice.”
by Virginia Chase Sutton.
“I stand before the painting a decade and a half / before I am transformed. Oil on wood panel / lush in detail—blood curdling into script, black velvet gown, / hair dressed like glory.”