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...
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...
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...
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...
The Sky's Reflection by Amy ManionWhen will I let myself outside?My back faces the window; acomputer screen faces me.Barricaded in a glass cage.And there she is: with her piercingeyes. Still through glass she sees me. Featured in the Massachusetts Coalition for...
Dreamed Weddingby Sarah Delice melts in boot treadsdrips onto the floor forming a puddle below the high table in the bar area empty, save for twograndparents, a six year-old...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I started studying poetry because I felt I knew nothing about it. I have an extensive background in American literature, and I made sure that when I began teaching at the college...
I overhear a boy humming "Jolene" while he practices long division by Carolyn Oliverand, sudden as a train’s blue note—I know I don’t deserve it—Dolly Parton becomes the president.The West Wing’s garlanded in rhinestones, fringedin bushels of Tennessee River...
Groundhogby Laura RodleyThe groundhog’s fur is silver, silkily rippling in the windas she chomps ends of grasses, clover, not yet have I seen her eat anything that causes consternation;she has scoured the walking path festoonedwith acorns that have...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I only remember loving the idea of poetry as a kid, the little daydreamer I was. I wrote a bunch of poems before the age of ten, a couple of which were published...
How to Skip Stones by Ed MeekDo you remember keeping your eyes openfor flat, oval rocks to pocketon walks to the pond?Saving the best for last, you’d leanto one side and flick your wristflinging the stones just off the water.It isn’t easy to defy gravityand make a...
Social Distancing Becomes Me by Kerry LoughmanRemotely I discard the sentiment of hearts beating as onewhen no two hearts can beat equally without cost. I am the least trod path and mask my fearswith the polished nicetyof a forced smile....
Ms. B by Megan ScudellariIf tonight’s raincontinues its dogged dropsdrops will wash away the egg scentscent to barricade bunnies from the tulipstulips bursting from bulbs entombed in the fallthe fall after the bunnies picked the impatiens to deathspring impatiens...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My mother instilled my love of reading. She encouraged me to get my library card at a young age and to take out as many books as I wanted. Then I crashed my bike riding home from...
A Word from Death during the Pandemic by Deborah Gorlin These days when I feel distanced from ceremonies in honor of my undoings, a memory arises unbidden, of a cliffside funeral in a tiny village, one of five, linked by rocky paths through...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I had a writing teacher in middle school who really loved poetry, and urged me to keep writing outside of school after he found out I was going through some really dark...
Safe Passage by Brad CrenshawIAll said, things are settling down.It’s that sort of world, definitelyhaunted, but those who know report that roadsare open in Los Angeles, where peopletry to breathe again, and citizensin India can see the Himalayaswhite as frozen...
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Life Before the Virusby Lesléa NewmanI.I remember shaking hands:damp sweaty hands and dry scratchy hands,bone-crushing handshakes and dead-fish handshakes,two-handed handshakes, my hand sandwiched between a pair of big beefy palms.I...