Jennifer L. Freed “Have You Locked up the Knives?” In answer to Ms. K, Department of Children and Family Services Staples, thumb tacks, twist ties, tooth picks. The tips of unfolded paperclips. The spirals of wire binding her college-ruled…
Browsing: Poetry
Nicole Hospital-Medina the PAPER poem I found the paper on the kitchen counter under the peacock blue Parenting magazine. ~ I would enter a forest of animals, a zebra, el loro, the ugly ducklings. I would decorate a river…
Margo Berdeshevsky God Bless The Child That’s Got His Own (for labor days poised to shatter) My friends are losing mothers and fathers My world is losing air Today my father died, he says to me My…
Jennifer Franklin APRIL 2020, NYC The winds shake the windows. It has rained for six days as if the gods are punishing us for hubris and hatred. Without school to tire her, my daughter cannot sleep through the night…
Kim Brandon Love On The Front Line five patients died today what we wrap in sheets what is disposable now is a battle lost for humanity finally, the day ends time to head home a reprieve from war…
Nicole Callihan From Yesteryear (3/26) And even if I were. And even if I were. If there are 24 hours in a day and 6 people in a house, 12 hands to be washed, and also bodies, 2 of…
Patricia Starek Simple Request The request was simple Can my child come say hello to your child? With appropriate social distance of course It has been 8 weeks since this 7-year-old has seen a friend in the flesh…
Eileen Cleary Orphan Sky For John Keats Don’t say the father died; say night falls like a father off a horse. Don’t say the boy misses him. Or that the executor betrays. Say father’s a pink carnation the…
Karen George Frida Kahlo’s My Nurse and I, 1937 I. Infant with an adult head, held loosely, near falling from a wet nurse’s arms—face covered by a dark mask, a grimace. Lush foliage reaches her shoulders. Sky of…
Jen Karetnick Advised to Keep a Journal During Lockdown, I Pretend I Am in Pompeii and hold a glass to the wall of the world hissing with a language invented each day anew What sibilance seeps into my…