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…
Dorsía Smith Silva My daughter is the wolf of me moonhowls my four-legged desires into rivers of lupine flower & alpha star hunts down fears nesting in hunter sniffs lumps of green to thirst caribou bloats on stars’ colostrum like extra moonlight marvel at her wilderness unwhittled which mirrors my own…
Dianne Silvestri For My Son About to Become a Father One birthday before you stood taller than I, I gave you a telescope, fawn legs hinged, black nose and an eye, assembly instructions folded in the box. Twice we…
Gianna Russo Locket & Altar The moon is waxing or waning— whatever. It’s been seven years, the bare kitchen table set to remember. She’s in the dog star, ++++++she’s with the great bear. Some nights she’s waiting behind a…
Carla Panciera Incantations I liked the name Rose for a daughter. Rose quartz, in the hands of the right carver might yield a six-rayed star from an inclusion. I was pregnant and had begun to read things like tombstones…
Deborah Leipziger Dear Moon If I could untether your lunar sentence, your alphabet, what would you say? Am I the only one listening to your lunar cadence, awaiting your language of light? When I was little, I thought you…
Cynthia Marie Hoffman 12 Moon Funeral I am vacationing in the county of doors. On the third floor, my bedroom door opens to the night, a black room where a vinyl record plays the call of an owl. I…
Curated by Jennifer Martelli and Cindy Veach In her poem, “Postlude,” J.L. Conrad writes, “I avoid horoscopes because / I do not want to know how it will all end.” The poems in this September folio—the month of the…
J.L. Conrad Postlude ++++++or, last things first He is born in the year the world is supposed to end. I avoid horoscopes because I do not want to know how it will all turn out. Pain centers itself in…
How to Witness a Miracle Without Converting Ajanaé Dawkins My mother swapped prayer for sharp screams when my sister crowned. The epidural settled on one side until the nerves in her left hip became stars, dying down the dark…
Carolina Hotchandani So the Humans Reproduced For the world required another mirror— proffered by the eyes of the child. For the ocean was insufficient. For the water on windy days withheld reflections, giving back the crests of waves— their…