Jeffrey Gray
The trail gone cold, your voice asleep in your throat,
She had to have shopped for the hose, measured it, fit it with duct tape to the pipe and run it through the back
Wendy Xu
covetous old knots on a string still tied to my grandfather’s big toe in Shandong
Dan Chiasson
It was getting late, and you could feel the strain of all the things that hadn’t happened yet not happening
Dana Levin
And then I see it: to be a hero is to be a child of a mother —
Emily Fragos
I admit it, my life, I was totally taken with you. I went along, laughing and smiling, or sometimes on the verge of tears
Jane Wong
mewing a downy echo: every dead thing is in need of more mourning.
Fady Joudah
someone you know is on the brink of suicide, of murder, is it also not a national question?
Richie Hofmann
I lunch alone on chunks of venison. The Black Death feels distant, like you.
I covered his eyes with my lips, but he pushed me away (“there’s no returning from there”)
He sings and speaks with the voice of a priest, father, or devil.
Adriana Socoski
I was up in God’s country, up on a mountain early and, of course, I fell in love
Speech is the tree line of your easy chair—
The tipsy slurring of worlds AWOL from fixed positions.
Robert Frost
From the Review in 1949.
Eavan Boland
This is not death. It is the terrible
Suspension of life.
Carlos Andrés Gómez
Sometimes I search for the exact dayI stopped dreaming in the language that sings my name.
Jenny Xie
But slowly we disciplined the mouth Tamed it into movement
Surely for this reason death must announce itself
again and again in such sour language
Shane McCrae
We are the ghosts of who comes after us
The stones is dead the stones that were too big
For human beings to move the angel saw
The humans in their freedom killed them both
And pounded with their bloody fists on the splintering gates
Victoria Chang
Last month, my father fell again and I walked through him for the third time.
Paul Muldoon
In the Archaeological Museum there’s at least one artifactfor which the use is no longer known.
Laura Kasischke
The thing you never dared to fearwill never make its way in here.
What I want is thatlost shoebox full of faded snapshots back.
Vijay Seshadri
When I knew you, I had time for mine.
The sun itself a larger bird, its wings manufacturing the solar wind
Major Jackson
Tragically, he believes he can mend his wounds with his poetry.
Angela Gardner
Turbulent paradise, thirsting.
Stephanie Burt
People are different, too
