Melody Wilson The Smell of Lambing —after a comment by Barbara Drake A friend says she’s nostalgic for lambing, for the smell she loves but will never experience again. I imagine lanolin, grass, the birth of kittens—a scent so narrow…
Browsing: Poem of the Month
Alexis David The Walled Forest —after David Baker’s “Can You Say It” There was a calling. Yes, the winter leaves. They were calling me— sparrows, soil, the blue tones of light and a rhododendron tree. It was a calling, yes,…
Jennifer Barber Writing Too Fast, I Write “Thew” for “The” As if you and I commingled +++++++++in the dark and later the same day I give birth to little baby Thew, +++++++++born in winter under a mauve sky. By…
U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo Life Quiver I think I felt my daughter speak to me whisper her presence in the depths of my core felt her name bubble in my mind Shamiso her brown angelic face showing herself through the tears the…
Hilary King Investigations Are you watching your sad detective show our daughter asks us each evening. Sad L. A. detective, sad British detective, sad Swedish detective in gray blue suit standing in a gray blue field, white-shrouded body at his…
Dayna Patterson Gertrude on arte materna Published in MER 21 Note: The poem is published as an image to preserve formatting. Dayna Patterson is a Thea-curious recovering Mormon, fungophile, macrophotography enthusiast, and textile artist.…
Doralee Brooks Hips —After Lucille Clifton/Patricia Smith My hips hold me on weak knees and unsteady ankles as I pull spiky weeds like needles from the side of the house wearing Michael’s leather work gloves. He tells me to…
Glenis Redmond Setting the Table Mama hands me fork, spoon and knife as she circles the table I follow her lead. Learn what comes around goes around. She demonstrates how to fold the napkins and where the drinking glasses…
Natalie Solmer I Am a Great Lake My youth was Everclear spilling slicking the table, its decks of cards, the phones that didn’t exist in our pockets or hands but Euchre. We learned it in school playing in our…
Sarah Browning Borrowing Happiness from Tomorrow It’s so dry this year the sycamores are shedding their enormous leaves, palms of crackle and nerve littering the yard mid-August, while exhaust from futuristic mowers the city hauls from rec center to…