Poems

Things We Will Forget about Whales by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski (published in Canary, Issue 47, Winter 2019-2020) How the shy ones sang...

Home on New Year’s by Dina Ben-Lev Never mind about being alone. At least when you need it, the bathroom’s unoccupied. Couples won’t...

Windigo by Louise Erdrich (published in her collection, Jacklight, 1984, Henry Holt Publishers) For Angela The Windigo is a flesh-eating,...

Soap by Karin Gottshall (published in Juked, 2013) It is full bitter winter when I begin to bleed. Too ashamed to tell. Aligning myself...

I’m not a religious person but by Chen Chen (published in his 2017 book, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, BOA) God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I’m not a religious person. I thought I’d mad

You Tell Me You Want to Live Close to Nature by Joan Mazza (published in The Mark Lit Review , August, 2021) You plan to have acreage, a garden, pots with herbs on every windowsill. You’ll have a dog and cat or maybe two of each, and wildlife will gather on your property, a sanctuary. How lovely the fantasy of back-to-the-earth, the simple life. I plant basil seeds in handmade flowerpots painted with dragonflies and flowers, with potting soil I store in the garage. The mic

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now by A. E. Housman Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

Saint Monica Burns It Down by Mary Biddinger (published in Valparaiso Poetry Review) It wasn’t her house, but she would strip it of its...

Arizona by Kaitlyn McNab (published in Electric Lit, Issue 171, 2021) I want to be whisked away to Arizona and kissed in the depression...

Poems I Probably Won’t Write About My Stepfather by Jennifer Stewart Miller (published in Crab Creek Review, March 25, 2021) On Holding...

Thanks by W.S. Merwin published in Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005) Listen with the night falling we are...

(The Mothman Leaves the Used Car Lot Empty-Handed) by Robert Wood Lynn published in his book, Mothman Apologia, from Yale University...

Thanksgiving by Ella Wheeler Wilcox We walk on starry fields of white And do not see the daisies; For blessings common in our sight We...

Love in a Time of Climate Change by Craig Santos Perez (published in his book, Habitat Threshold , 2020, Omnidawn) recycling Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII” I don’t love you as if you were rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss. I love you as one loves the last seed saved within

Butsuma by Bern Mulvey (published in his 2008 book, The Fat Sheep Everyone Wants, CSU Press) Time to meet the relatives, only they’re...

A Drink with Something In It by Ogden Nash There is something about a Martini, A tingle remarkably pleasant; A yellow, a mellow Martini;...

Enough by Suzanne Buffam (from her 2010 book, The Irrationalist, published by Canarium Book) I am wearing dark glasses inside the house...

Aubade with Ravens by Jessica Lynn Suchon (published in Pinch, Fall 2019) When you sleep, the moon plucks hurt from my palm like a loose...

Across Wyoming by Kari Despain (published in Rockvale Review, November 2019) driving for dawn, a wind storm shaking the November...

Scars by Truing Tran (published in North Dakota Quarterly, Summer 1993) My father’s body is a map, a record of his journey. He carries a...