By Tricia Cope
you and I had faithin dreams and echoesof dreams. Earnest suits,macaroni, used cars.Now I know you too well and not at all. Middle age,lustful of meaning, intolerantof levity, rewrites our storiesabout what is real. We wake up restless under tangled sheets.A lark sings. Curtains flutterin slanted sunlight and things transform,luminescent: the future, yourface. Life, which …
By Lorraine Jeffery
To what I know— the sky, wind, water, trees.To what I don’t know— the stronger, wiser force. Do you practice kintsugi? Knowing that we are all broken and c a c k e d r do you mend our shattered parts with gold? Because of what I know and don’t know,I believe you can …
By Sharlee Mullins Glenn
Sodden leaves besmearthe patchy snow.The few birds thatbraved the winterchirp forlornly inboney branches tothe dirge-like dripof melting slush.A brooding sun sulksbehind leaden clouds,lugubrious and glum. and then— The sky splits.A shard of blue,sharp as joy,pierces the gloom.Sunlight strikes the snowigniting diamonds—and the world inhales.
By Sharlee Mullins Glenn
zipped into your fuzzy Care Bear suit(the only item on your Santa’s list that year)or caped in handmade Batman gloryyou wore hero like a second skin—my nimble boy, all sinew and spark,striking ninja poseshands slicing through the shadowsof your imagined battles I played the sidekick,you the conquering lead,bravado masking the trembling coreof your tender heart …
By Sarah Colby
Filled up, emptied out, filled up again—stew bowl, fruit bowl, bowl for water—by hands that work beginning to end, clink of the spoon a steady refrainthat leaves a slight groove in the porringer.Filled up, emptied out, then full again like the stoneware, chipped, where tongs were lainweek after week for each Sunday supperby hands that …
By Susan Jeffers
I was going to curl up in a ballAnd just cry my face all the way offWalk around as a weeping skull for a whileBut I had groceries in the carSo I took care of those instead I was going to take a lava hot bathSlide down beneath the surfaceBreath held, lungs burningReducing myself to …
By Olivia Winward
Not wringing words from a rag,rather stepping out into the rain,into the rain that will come. Running in rain bootsdown a dust-coated roadwhere pools of thought have gone dry,gone to form a cloud in the sky. Not even the weatherman knowswhen the words will return,but I am readywhen it rains. I am drenchedby thedropsof un-finishedthoughts,fallingdownagain. …
By Sierra Wilson
Our ancestors a hundred years or so ago might havegrown faint at the sight of us –a bobbing soup of human fleshwith just a few bits of nylon and netting to go around But there’s something sweet,natal even, to this near-naked amalgam of strangerswith pimples and moles,curves and bones,rocking and swaying as one with the …
By Sierra Wilson
Funny how I didn’t want to do this either—bundle coats,tug boots,check clocks,check again Most of all I didn’t want thesting of chill air on warm cheeks,the reminder that, no, I won’t begoing back to bed Yet somehowthese morning walks have becomea treasure, a ritual, a welcome pauseamidst the hurried mornings Out in the chill with …
By Nancy Heiss
Slowly but firmly I plunge a thumb-tack into the egg until *tick* the shell relents to my point. Surgically, then, I unbenda paperclip, force it throughthat decimal, jog it up and down to pierce the yolk before shaking—scrambling chalaza, vitellus, albumen… I don’t think about babies until I press the egg to my lipsand blow. …