Poetry

by Jayne Marek.
“Old cat, my little love, as you withdraw / along with the declining days in October / and fold yourself into slanting light, / you seem quiet and neat as rolled-up socks.”

by Laura E. Garrard.
“I am finally kind to my broken body / when she pops her hip, limps her leg. // I do not shout down my spine / but coo and coax like a loving mother…”

by June Rowe.
“Named Inky by his captors, with appealing / comparisons to human traits, feedings / timed to please the children’s flattened / faces squished against the glass….”

by James Gonda.
“In the shed behind the house where /
garden tools lean in a corner there /
was a spider, black and still, as large /
as a thumbprint tucked behind a spade…”

by Alexandra Ozols.
“…so I worry and know that everything / is not fine which sends my heart galloping / like a horse turned wild by gunshots…”

by Jay Kidd.
“It was on an airplane that I let my / mother read the first paragraph of / Swann’s Way, my travel reading.”

by Emily Sullivan Sanford.
“Every spring I must explain my arms to children, / before my legs arrive in summer.”

by Vincent Casaregola.
“Having left work early this spring / afternoon, I feel no rush / to be anywhere but here and now, / even waiting at this reluctant light…”