Poetry

On Sundays

Willie Perdomo

On Sundays we composed our own music.

Tapped a nickel against a mailbox,
pounded the wall with the heel of our
palms, and sought a demo-type sound.

Beret

Natania Rosenfeld

Strange word for so simple
a thing as a flat felt hat.

Don’t forget your bear-ay,
my mother’d say, and I thought it

Nick

Natania Rosenfeld

You nicked me
now give me back,
un-wrinkled.

Unbudgably Yours

Samuel Hazo

Summering in Pennsylvania
and wintering in Florida
would give me two addresses.

Albuquerque Aubade

Randy Blasing

Making a pilgrimage to Albuquerque
to give thanks I cheated heart surgery
of a bad outcome only last month,

Hasty Pudding

Stanley Moss

On a road leading to where I used to live,
thoughts go back to friends who would visit,
most now are in places quite exquisite,

Against Pessimism

Vona Groarke

I remember there was a big bridge
with a toll, and for once I had change.
The river was a shadow of itself below

Against Anxiety

Vona Groarke

A cartoon rider on a horse so real
it shits and stalls and rears against the rider
it’s been saddled with in this narrative.

The Old Country

Vona Groarke

I came out of that country
with one suitcase
crammed with newspaper,
seeds in every fold.

Perspective

Carolie Parker

There is one pointtwo point and pointless
(I am referring to some of
the excesses of Canaletto).

Light Steps

Jeredith Merrin

Sorrow, keep calm.
Evening—you asked for it—has come.
Darkening streets (depending who you are)
bring peace, or fear.

Verklärte Nacht

Bruce Bond

The dawn of the age is an old tune just barely in d minor.
You can go there, listen, hear what Arnold Schoenberg heard

Boats

Hailey Leithauser

Boats are sad folks
as they rock
and they rock tied

Dove Song

Hailey Leithauser

Murmurous muezzin, hedge-
hiding, no reason to
silence for never I’d harm
you, not Rueheart, not

Invitation

Hailey Leithauser

Slovenly blondes, mussed
and unbuttoned,
in feathering snow,
in ice-burst of spring,

Jar Song

Don Bogen

How could I calm the ache
that drifted through my sleep?
A plain ceramic jar,
rounded at the lip,

The Sandy Hook Fire

Henry Hart

Like a monk hunched over gilded letters,
my brother studied flies hatching on the Pootatuck,
picked a red and gold Parmachene Belle
from a metal box, tied it to a tippet

On Atrazine

Zoë Hitzig

“Well I drank it,” says the scientist
When they ask him what he has
Done with the contaminated
Water. “There is less in the lab’s

Proxy Means

Zoë Hitzig

A test. In a morning
Blue suit the Census taker
Drops his credentials
And picks them up

Nostalgia

James Arthur

The museum was closed, so no one saw
the statue of Adam
tumble to the floor, and break. No one saw
the plywood pedestal

Prospects from the Palisades

John Koethe

We’re always other people, whoever they are.
I’m grateful to poets’ biographies—a genre nearly as
Obsolete as its subjects—for helping me make myself up,

Wide Margin Love Poem

Susan Barba

Let me
let you
make me
proud.

Current

Susan Barba

The closest we can come
to the unseen
plumes of scent
spun by a spindle

The Way You Look Tonight

Peter Cameron

It chafes you, I know, this
Remorseless penchant for drama
I have. Life is too short

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

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—