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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...

Tired Sex by Chana Bloch (published in The Atlantic , December 1997 ) Trying to strike a match in a matchbook that has lain all winter under the woodpile: damp sulfur on sodden cardboard. I catch myself yawning. Through the window I watch that sparrow the cat keeps batting around. Like turning the pages of a book the teacher assigned— You ought to read it, she said. It’s great literature.

Sunday Morning, Cumberland Gap by A.E. Stringer published in Still, Summer 2015 Black cat appears under my roadside picnic table....

Autumn by Siegfried Sassoon October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood In whose lament I...

Autumnal by Louise Glück (from her 1976 book, Descending Figure, The Ecco Press, NY) Public sorrow, the acquired gold of the leaf, the...

October by Robert Frost O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste...

Middle-Aged Karaoke by Timothy Houghton Published in SNReview, Spring/Summer 2008 A big woman jumps out of a booth deftly, avoiding...

The Fury of Beautiful Bones by Anne Sexton (from The Complete Poems, Houghton Mifflin, 1982) Sing me a thrush, bone. Sing me a nest of...

Storm Ending by Jean Toomer (from his 1923 poetic novel, Cane) Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads, Great, hollow, bell-like...

A Dirge Melody: Don’t Let the Humans Know We Contain Souls by Elizabeth Upshur published in Mistake House (2017) If you want the pearl...

Shirt by Robert Pinsky (published in his book, The Want Bone) The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible...

My Children Asleep on the Chest of September by Ariana D. Den Bleyker (published in The Mantle, Issue 6, November 2018) It’s an alluring...

Dearborn North Apartments Chicago, Illinois by Lola Haskins Rows of rectangles rise, set into brick. And in every rectangle, there is a lamp. Why should there be a lamp in every window? Because in all this wide city, there is not enough light. Because the young in the world are crazy for light and the old are afraid it will leave them. Because whoever you are, if you come home late but it looks like noon, you won’t tense at the click when you walk in which is probably afte