Caminante, no hay camino / Traveler, There Is No Road by Antonio Machado "Caminante, son tus huellasel camino y nada más;Caminante, no hay camino,se hace camino al andar.Al andar se hace el camino,y al volver la vista atrásse ve la senda que nuncase ha de volver a...
Self-portrait of my poems as the Fall by Serena Yang every day the birds come to knock their beaksagainst the glass, thinking it air. every day my penscratches over the water-stained pages of my notebookand thinks itself a vein. my blood turning to ink.a measured...
driving while black by Mwatabu S. Okantah It is not what you call me,it is what I answer to…—African Proverb driving in my carblack wisdom from the ages is turned on its head: in my carwhat i think of my Self is of no significance(save in my own mind…)because i am...
the Andes speak of death and 2020 by Isabella Ramirez i. April 2020, southern hemispherethe Andes seem awfully quiet these days.Cotopaxi no longer writhes magma now that the streets have become volcanic.my mother sends condolences to people in Guayaquil who...
It was the lightning… by Sean Mahoney …and wife telling me she has to isolatefor 14 days due to an apparent exposure to Covid-19 at the hospital. She sat on concrete just where the rise meets the flatat the end of the driveway. The Impreza running with the bright...
The Inscrutable Illness of Things by Satya Dash My grandmother often in bouts of angerturned stone pink in silence, quietlyremarking: it’s impossible to silencesilence. It took me years to understandmy awe for the way she could deal a nounits own verb. I think about...
Sickness by Jennifer Perrine We never married, thought it too quaint, too ball and chain. Fixed, pinned. We rejected being yoked like oxen, caged together in that hallowed zoo. And yet, we dreamt of a honeymoon, every place we’d explore, were money no object: north...
Let’s Go to Heaven by Mary Birnbaum A name halo winks on your chest. Your heart chakra is open for business. A deck of Tarot cards fans your heated face.Out jumps an angel, smiling, handing outwings that fold neatly under T shirts. I am...
Argo, My Argo by Tawanda Mulalu The mirror’s clubfooted,not me. Afro’s gone Medusa again. Every coil’s its own Hydra.I’m adventuring with a comb. The sink’s full of myths...The myths are growing... Everyday I find myselfsmaller with effort, my life’s lightwith every...
The Dandelion Speaks of Survival Quintin Collins When they see me rise, a nebula of coronas, sun-burst spires strewn among their bluegrass lawns,they will come for me. When my roots fan a mazearound their chrysanthemums, interlace a cagearound their petunias, grab the...
Hope by Tamara Fricke these are dismal times;the rent is late, bills go unpaid, bleakness swaddles apathy like a new born and nurses overwhelming fear. tenderness, so easily forgotten,gets lost in the empty refrigerator or tossed out with the spoilt milk. it’s easy to...
There Are No Unsacred Spaces by Cynthia Manick I’m trying to tell you that the world is beautiful. All thehellos we say in a week, or month, the way the groovesof the grin know what to do. Think about the first timeman went from four legs, hairy knuckles folded over,...
Because the world has its own version of solace by Amy Dryansky in a field of decapitated corn stalkson the corner of Reed’s Bridge and Elma flock of wild turkeys scratchedas if something nourishing remainedbetween the rows of dry stubble.They interrupted a...
Retreat to Saint Leo Abbey by Michael Angel Martín When a long-loosened windshield Wiper snaps off the bumperless Mazda And gets snatched up into a night-storm Erupting on the drive’s final stretch,I don’t think I’ll make it. But I do, Even if hours past compline....
Abecedarian for the Future by Ada Limón All the old gray gods have fallenback to their static realms of mythcleared from the benches, thrones,dragged kicking to their stone tombs,each one grizzled by their swift exilefrayed, bedraggled, forced to kneel,give up their...
Signs by Anne Whitehouse A brief April snow disrupted our spring.Amid clumps of snow, daffodilsnodded in the icy breeze. A glaze of snowflakes sugared the hyacinths. I worried for them and the tender lettuces,red and green, I’d only just planted.But the sun came out;...
Barely There by Julia Story I had touched the weepingbirch in the cemetery so manytimes that there was a smallmark, a grease mark or wornplace where my hand hadrested, trying to feel thespinning that connected itto some invisible undergroundpathway. The cranial...
Contender by Traci Brimhall It’s alright to overdress for the riot. Your rage is stunning.It’s alright to pursue the wrong pleasures and the right suffering.Here’s my permission. Take it. It’s alright to replace a siren with a bell. Let the emergency make some music....
And Blue by Kiese Laymon All our irony and stretch marks and knowing nods and creations and trifling ways and imagination and sight beyond sight and dignity in the face of murder and lies that sound truthful and the truth that sound lied up and porches and...
Horseshoe Crabs off Loop Beach, Cape Cod, Mid-September by Carole A. Stasiowski I don’t expect this extravagance of death, a thousand and more ...
Unmasked by Maria Luisa Arroyo for Lucie Brock-Broido (1956-2018) | Stonecoast Writers’ Conference, 1993 LB squared, you flipped up my mask, askedme to write beyond my eyes, the Hagia Sophia, Agha-jan’s stern face, Mamani’s tear-soaked chador, their son, my husband...