Poetry

Because of their format, several poems that appear in the current issue are included only in pdf. To read them, click on their titles on the right side of this page.

The Light in the Marsh Grass
Jeffrey Harrison

was alive: small creatures aglow and crawling
one after the other down each tall green blade—
thousands of them bending at all angles—

Echo Lake
Nicholas Friedman

You hunker underneath a shaggy fir,
shifting when sunlight shifts its bit of shade,
and eat a single almond every hour.

Flirt
Christina Pugh

The bank of cloud that night was like a smoother
lamb’s wool, a fistful you’d pull to stuff
a pointe shoe for ballet class.  Or maybe the cloud
bank was more like the tiny cotton coverlet

The Staircase
Christina Pugh

A white jar dissolves into the whitish background
that gently presses its narrow form upright.  Morandi’s
ceramics must be manna for the eye, I think.  Here,
their proximity makes several forms seem melded—

Still Life, Mouth of the Vistula
Daniel Bourne

After a while the bird starts to twist
to turn this way and that
as if to show me every side

Unconscious Ode
Ann Keniston

Now that my mother, as others say, has passed,
I like to visit churches that display

the miraculously intact bodies of saints
in glass cases. Sometimes the hem of their carved garment

His Shirt
John Skoyles

The striped shirt drying
on the patio chair—
you can say he wore
that shirt,

self-driving
Laura Marris

when a man has selected himself to live longest of all

there will still be a fleet of Cadillacs to come for him in the night
self-driving from their garage

Living Room
Arthur Vogelsang

It is difficult reading today
Or doing my volunteer work at the hospital or reading.
Do you have anything unbelievable that you have read twice?

Cold Heaven
Elisabeth Murawski

Pink Jackie’s back in the car.
The shot, the slump, the gore.