Poetry

What Happens

By

Asking peopleWhat happens to them after they dieIs like asking babies in the wombWhat happens to them After they’re born—How can they answerWhen they don’t even know

Poetry

Moments in Greece

By

Andrea Potos

the laser brush we watchedburn soot off the gownof an ancient kore

the Delphic light, siftedthrough the nets of the godsto fall on us

Poetry

Spring Comes Around

By

Bruce Dethlefsen

a cold wet compress to her foreheada brisk rub and warm breath on her pale little handsa shiver her eyes blink twice then openspring comes around slowly

Poetry

Yesterday morning I’m pretty sure it was yesterdayI started walking along the beach toward someone whowould meet me at my destination. Where it was orwho it was I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Poetry

Cancer Is Not Cosmic Justice

By

Cynthia Belmont

Cancer is not a ringing bell,a queen of spades. Cancer is notyour mother’s hand-me-down, strung likepearls along the lymph nodes,smoky quartz clustered in the caving lung,

Poetry

Kissing Marilyn Monroe

By

Richard Roe

I’m sitting on a park bench noodling linesfrom a Billy Stayhorn song, Somethingto Live For, “watching the noon crowds,”when a woman bumps me with her hip.“How are you,” she asks, and I choke

Poetry

Kindergarten Graduation

By

Peter Burzynski

Mom said, Kiss her hand.I didn’t want to kiss my teacher;especially not on the bulginggreen vein of her thin hands.I think she had red hair. She waskind. She sent a memo home:

Poetry

Altar boy, circa 1959

By

Ed Werstein

Incense and extinguished candlesScent my small-town Saturday night.Post-benediction, our priest returns to the rectory.Stained-glass filters church light into the dusk.A mourning dove signals daylight’s departure.

Poetry

Dead Porcupine: No Metaphor

By

Steve Tomasko

I came across a dead porcupine sitting on its bellylooking asleep—his only sign of injury a crookedand bloody nose—and thought perhaps I’d get a poemout of it—this corpse I nearly stumbled over

Poetry

Alligators in the Basement

By

Jeri McCormick

My brother and I conjured a swamp of black water,filled it with saw-toothed specimens, upping the anteof our basement games. Any trek downstairs

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Poetry