Jane Yolen Mysteries Birth is not mysterious to the mother whose body is cradle and cafe. Who listens for breath, feels a whale swimming in the sea of her. She sends hand signals against her skin, is rewarded with a…
Browsing: Poetry
Brad Shurmantine The Big Yard Stunned, still moving in a sick green haze my widowed mom stared at a sea of blueprints and chose the one with the biggest yard, a field big enough to swallow up our pain…
Jendi Reiter Broken Family Couch I miss the neighbors who used to jump shirtless on the trampoline in the bramble woods they didn’t own. October, early, the sun is mooning through the fog, translucent disk, surprise of perfect geometry.…
Nicola Waldron (29205) there was a woman who lived in a house of wax when she came home from teaching children to speak who had never before spoken she would feel the walls of the house the doorknob to…
Libby Maxey Contrafactum “Every house has its particular orchestra.” —Sylvia Townsend Warner in the woods, a bear bell’s chunnering drone the flickers’ enfilade in the garden, a chiming gamelan wind wash in the leaves inside, outside’s company now that…
Veronica Kornberg A Daughter Leaves Home You’re moving clear across the country, your first real job, with no idea even how to sew on a button. Last of the packing done, and you hold out a black wool jacket, the…
Elana Bell Ruins As a child I loved to be found I slipped into the alley behind my house My mother called and called and I did not answer until I heard the net in her voice The ruins…
Melissa Andrés Pressed in Silence My Mother’s arms became a shawl to keep us warm in our aloneness, her smell, not of flowers, but of smoke taped our past against the cold – She is the beauty inside us all…
Anna V. Q. Ross Heaven Knows It’s like this—some days, you wake up and the light in the field is like swimming or moving through a clear fog, something that pushes back, not startling but steady pressure, the wall-to-wall of…
Angelique Zobitz We manage limited resources against unlimited needs so we cleave to one another tight as wet clothes plastered to damp bodies we – open hydrants that lift one another off our feet choose belief in the enough soothe,…