American Sonnet for the New Year by Terrance Hayes Things got terribly ugly incredibly quickly  Things got ugly embarrassingly quickly  actually Things got ugly unbelievably quickly  honestly Things got ugly seemingly infrequently  initially Things got ugly ironically usually  awfully carefully Things got ugly unsuccessfully  occasionally Things got ugly mostly painstakingly  quietly seemingly Things got ugly beautifully  infrequently Things got ugly sadly especially  freque

Snow, Fall by Judith Arcana That one time you hit the baby, that one time out on the street when the bus was so late and then didn't come and the snow started falling; that time you lifted all your food in bags, paper handles dampening and she kept holding onto your leg, pulling your coat and you couldn't carry her too while the flakes came thick and wet and faster. That’s the time you remember, not all the times you didn't, all those times when you didn't hit the baby, times

Christmas 1963 by Joseph Enzweiler Because we wanted much that year and had little. Because the winter phone for days stayed silent that would call our father back to work, and he kept silent too with our mother, fearfully proud before us. Because I was young that morning in gray light untouched on the rug and our gifts were so few, propped along the furniture, for a second my heart fell, then saw how large they made the spaces between them to take the place of less. Because

Trains in Winter by Jay Meek Over first coffee, I ride the diner and look out at snow fallen deep in gorges.  At winter stations, a locomotive can freeze to the rails, and a mountain night turn so cold it makes the rails snap.  Some trains in heavy snow overtake a moose herd along a roadbed, then sweep a few cows into a ravine, or maybe a bull crossing a trestle will go on through, catching his legs between the ties.  I've seen icebergs melting in a Newfoundland cove, their

The morning is clouded and the birds are hunched, More cold than hungry, more numb than loud, This crisp, Arizona shore, where desert meets The coming edge of the winter world. It is a cold news in stark announcement, The myriad stars making bright the black, As if the sky itself had been snowed upon. But the stars—all those stars, Where does the sure noise of their hard work go? These plugs sparking the motor of an otherwise quiet sky, Their flickering work everywhere in a w

My Love Is Black by DéLana R. A. Dameron You might say fear is a predictable emotion & I might agree. Whenever my husband leaves for his graveyard shift, when he prepares to walk out into the abyss of black sky, I am afraid tonight will be the night I become a widow. I don’t want to love like this. But here we are: walking hand in hand in our parkas down the avenues & he pulls away from me. I might be in some dreamy place, thinking of the roast chicken we just had, the cocon

Be Safe by Laura Cherry . . . for Molly Fisk It’s a renegade blessing, a luckless charm, an impossible command, a petition with one signature, a spangled net of wishes thrown over the precious other, an unwitting revelation: your well-being is needed for my own. The creek rises and the brown water bubbles. The wildfire leaps the road to approach the houses. Someone is shooting in the mall or dragging women from the jogging path. The crowd is drunk and growing angry. Fr

No More Birthdays by Hal Sirowitz Don’t swing the umbrella in the store, Mother said. There are all these glass jars of spaghetti sauce above your head that can fall on you, & you can die. Then you won’t be able to go to tonight’s party, or go to the bowling alley tomorrow. And instead of celebrating your birthday with soda & cake, we’ll have anniversaries of your death with tea & crackers. And your father and i won’t be able to eat spaghetti anymore, because the marinara sa

Let Us Now Praise Prime Numbers by Helen Spalding Let us now praise prime numbers With our fathers who begat us: The power, the peculiar glory of prime numbers Is that nothing begat them, No ancestors, no factors, Adams among the multiplied generations. None can foretell their coming. Among the ordinal numbers They do not reserve their seats, arrive unexpected. Along the lines of cardinals They rise like surprising pontiffs, Each absolute, inscrutable, self-elected. In the b