7/26/2020 10:11am Alondra Bobadilla •Plymouth Rock• ocean draws back sand appearing to be the veins of the sea tracks like seal slither leading back to earth’s greatest wonder and slickest deception domestic surface becomes roaring waves in one blinkan explosion...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My stepmother is the Massachusetts poet Christopher Jane Corkery, so being a poet was something I knew was a real thing from childhood, when she came into my life. I...
Moon’s Milk, Lion’s Milk by Zia Pollis I. Moon’s Milk For years I believed I was the furthest daughter from the son. An alien body, a broken orb in rotation around a more sacred center. My father, the Jupiter King, the Purple God, raised a storm of love in our shaking...
Quintin Collins What is most important to your writing process? The most important part of my writing process is letting the poems do their thing. From the title to the final word, I have to let the groove guide the intellect. Otherwise, I fail the poem. The pandemic...
Flowers at a Funeral by Sara LetourneauI don’t want to think about the flowers.They burn my eyes, blazing like sunsagainst the white parish wallsand the casket’s dark polished wood.Acknowledging them feels like whisperingprofanities in this crowded holy room wherethe...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My mother read to me from a book of children’s poetry when I was very little. I soon after became obsessed with song lyrics on the radio and on the vinyl records we...
A Visit to the Smash Roomby Joyce PeseroffDonated TVs, microwaves,printers, trophies, vases on tables. Baseball bats and mauls ready by the wall. $50/hr to playwith your boyfriend or alonewhen it’s hard to be a goodMom during the workday, gas up the...
How to Know Hunger like the Kingfisher by Karen Elizabeth SharpeMake yourselfhigh on a perchplunge headfirstbelow muscled waves,a plummet of halcyon gashand dagger-shaped bill.30 feet or more. Pluck the silverslipper craving of fish.Fan your wings and rise.High on a...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? The first time I remember poetry making a deep impression on me was when I had the measles at age eight. My mother had them along with me, and we lay in her bed with...
Summer 2021 Cicadas Ellen Steinbaum They’re my last cicadas, though who can be sure, of course. Given my age and their infrequent outings,like scheduled comets and eclipses, they could be penultimate, but most likely my concluding swarm. Every seventeen...
In light of recent events, this week’s issue of The Hard Work of Hope will be a little different. We are always trying to offer poems that meet the moment, and the current crisis in Haiti—along with its long history of instability and the United States’ involvement in...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I’ve been a reader of poetry for my entire life. My parents read to me, but I was an early reader too, so I was able to take in A. A. Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson, for...
Love is a Battlefield, Literally, Because the Planet is on Fire Margot Douaihy & I’m too in love with this world & its creatures, even though it feels like I’m choking sometimes,burning in a mote of gold smoke, until I’m nothing, I’m a shadow licking the...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My first real encounter with poetry was in the 8th grade when, one day, I was called upon to stand next to my desk and read out loud to the rest of the class Part Two of The...
Refugee by Richard HoffmanA man carries his door,the door of his house,because when the war is overhe is going homewhere he will hang iton its hingesand lock it, tight,while he tries to rememberthe word for welcome.If his house is gonewhen he returns,he will raise it...
Elisa Rowe What is most important to your writing process? Doubt and wonder, equally. What about you comes across most in your writing? Maybe my sensitivity? To emotions, experiences, objects, how my senses process the world and the way it shapes me in big and...
Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read by Jill McDonoughCindy: not her real name. I met herin prison, and people in prison I givethe fake names. I taught her Shakespeare, rememberher frown, wide eyes, terror of gettingthings wrong. Her clear, arguable thesison Desdemona’s...
Mad Libs by Merryn RutledgeAs fall lumbers into winter,my grandson fills more and more of the blank spacesin our mad lib tales with hibernating bears.In COVID-crazy weekly callswe two hermits try to claim as comicthe incomparably absurd:Remote first grade--an...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? For the longest time, truth be told, I had no idea that I ever wanted to write poems: I had joined the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts as a fiction writer, and my...
What Anticipated Wonders We’d Have Summed by Thomas MixonWhat tallied courtesies, hedged bits of reaffirming pushnotifications we will never eat, foreverlodged between incisors of what could have been.I’ve found warm columns of an august Aprilwe will never live, next...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I think my first encounter with poetry was in nursery rhymes and jump-rope chants. Through them I learned about rhythm and rhyme. Then in high school, I fell in love with the...