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The Strangers by Patrick Hicks After we picked you up at the Omaha airport, we clamped you into a new car seat and listened to you yowl beneath the streetlights of Nebraska. Our hotel suite was plump with toys, ready, we hoped, to soothe you into America. But for a solid hour you watched the door, shrieking, Umma, the Korean word for mother. Once or twice you glanced back at us and, in this netherworld where a door home had slammed shut forever, your terrified eyes paced bet

September 1918 by Amy Lowell This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows. Under a tree in the park, Two little boys, lying flat on their faces, Were carefully gathering red berries To put in a pasteboard box. Some day there will be no war, Then I shall take out this afternoon And turn

Morning Song by Sylvia Plath Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your mother Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow Effacement at the wind’s hand. All night your moth-breath Flickers among the flat pink r

The Raft by Erica Reid I approach every poem I write as if I’m going to save a life. —Aaron Abeyta It was no small feat to locate a phone book—but I did, and Angela Winston from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, I have chosen your name at random and I have come to save your life. I recognize that it is a huge swing on my part to assume that you need saving—but then we are all drowning these days, are we not? Don’t you wake up feeling you’ve reached your limit, that the worst must be past,