Poetry

POETRY By Sheila Black The rattler your husband impaled by bring­ing down his shovel, the body split in two, those twitch­ing parts. Frost killed the but­ter­fly weed and the orange tree. The prickly pear sprawled into slime, the wood splin­tered into apart­ment houses for ants and…

POETRY By Jessica Cohn A woman could forget herself, staring at pome­gran­ate in the produce section. Juicy red arils, peddled in see-through cups. It’s invol­un­tary. The mouth makes room for a sweet bite of seeds. A woman could remem­ber when pome­gran­ate was hard to come by, a strange…

POETRY By Lucia Cherciu Temp­ta­tion: I find sandals for me when looking for gifts. Con­fu­sion: I buy two dresses for me when shop­ping for canning jars. Some claim gold has healing prop­er­ties; right, money helps. I research claims about the ben­e­fits of silver. Kissing of icons, silver chalice, silver…

POETRY By Sheila Black The year I spent a month in Denver vis­it­ing my daugh­ter in the eating dis­or­der hos­pi­tal the closest com­pan­ions were the geese who flocked the con­crete islands between the too-wide roads.   Some nights it was only fairy tales I understood:…

POETRY By Eric Abal­a­jon “I used to hang out just outside           the fence of Pearson Inter­na­tion­al, on week­ends with friends,         and bring binoc­u­lars. It became         a bad hobby imme­di­ate­ly after 9–11.”      …

POETRY By Jillian Hanson When you can do nothing what can you do? —Zen Koan   i. Sit in the nothing. Talk to nothing. Do nothing. See what nothing offers, prob­a­bly nothing. Offer nothing some­thing, since you are not nothing. Offer nothing your whole pres­ence, the…

POETRY By Thomas Osatchoff I had a dream that I asked Duterte what fruit and veg­etable pickers will do after their jobs become auto­mat­ed. He said they will be rock pickers. I said, but can’t rock picking also be auto­mat­ed? He said yes, but every­one needs…

POETRY By Ife­oluwa Ayan­dele I know a door that leads to some­where in the dark and walking right through  the door is like walking through a house   filled with the void of a ghost. I am outside  my own body & my grief grows like…

POETRY By Linda Michel-Cassidy Recla­ma­tion   A whale appears in the bay ahead of sched­ule and far from the Pacific.   Because we ache  for wonder these days, we think this a good sign,   an omen of a new begin­ning or some such non­sense, despite her showing ribs. …

POETRY By Tatiana Retivov There is a country where my voice must hold its daily reck­on­ing and ques­tion this alle­giance to the spirit of the cross­roads who has scat­tered what remains too hor­ri­ble for lan­guage and placed a skull over a stump to guard his wretched bound­aries. I…