Two Poems
“I don’t bother wondering / about cracked up speech /
The same word passes / from your lips as mine.”
By Michael Igoe
Sagitta
“All life-support systems are still hanging in there, / I’m not suffocating yet. /
I’m not starving yet. / But it doesn’t seem like I’m going to make it back to you.”
By Ryan Stevens
The Grief Picker
“From behind shut doors, / our eyes shine with relief.
A murder of crows feast on our unnamed sadness, our untold tales.”
By Aditya Shankar
The Sister’s Vigil
“Marya catches her wrist, draws her closer still, as close as
two desperate people in the midst of a revolution can be. ‘Later.’”
By M Tomko
From the
South of India
“Succulent succour while my city burns /
to the ground.”
By Meghna Anil Nair
Rose Knows
“From this view, the falling leaves look like fluttering butterflies.
Rose knows that when she comes down she’ll be in a lot of trouble.”
By Zach Murphy
Heartland
“...a golden casserole fills a day sullen /
with aromatic Americana”
By A.R. Salandy
Receding Tide
“I sit staring out at the receding tide, and the Pacific Ocean
that lies between myself and my mother’s morning walk.”
By Tania Martin
Tunnel Vision
“Look right–a silent sheet of sun-storm, /
heaven staring in, unblinking.”
By Meimei Xu
Dance As Resistance
“I move through air like it is water, something to be moved, something within which to dwell.
I am moved, I am cradled in space, I am held, I am holding joy so deep it aches and weighs my arms down.”
By Maya Mahony
Baby Hawks are Crying
“Still the black birds swoop and swarm / Revenge? Obsessive useless effort? /
Or ignorance / of hopeless foregone end?”
By Lita Kurth
The Single Mother's
Guide to Money
“...So smooth-skinned with that perfect hair and always doing the right things. Milquetoast.
I like my men a little more complicated, rougher around the edges.”
By Tarn Wilson
Three Poems
“you have to break everything to put it back / together again
... I say life is nothing / like a poem, but poetry is everything / like life.”
By Liza Kolbasov