Sandra Crouch The Miracle The way the bush beans begin with curls and winding our story grown from seed not with the motion of bodies meeting and meeting again but inside the thick yellowing leaves of the soon-potatoes, the…
Jodi Boulton The Badlands They say they’re the result of two geological processes, deposition and erosion. What I know is this: The earth there rubs like dry, gritty clay and is the color of putty against my palms. Alligator…
Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi For My Daughter Not with the milk coursing through my breast but with the sap singing in my unwritten poems did I feed you. Long nights, until the glowing of dew on every lonely leaf; I was…
Megan Merchant Working the Night Shift String a white sheet from the body of trees in the wild, set a lantern behind its screen and wait for the flush of mottled wings to lisp and net the light, note how…
Poem of the Month July 2022 Teresa Tumminello Brader (W)hole Filling one of her orifices with one part of his body is no longer enough. He yearns to crawl inside her. He wants to miniaturize his…
Richelle Buccilli Dear backyard honeysuckle Past the fresh lumber of the new wood fence, past the heat of late May sweating on our foreheads, past smoke, past clay, past dirt, past even the diesel fumes, you stay. As if…
Vanessa Napolitano Yellow Cabinet You painted the drawers with gilt handles yellow, out in the garden. Seven months pregnant, a neckerchief fashioned into a hat. Black and orange paisley in your hair and your hair long and chestnut. Your shoulders…
Emily Patterson Near the Fourth of July in a Pandemic The summer you were born, fireworks sputtered and crackled every night for weeks, briefly luminous. Roused from sleep by the weight of you, I heard them still, even as…
Kelly Sue White River Summer The days of slow flow river time, canoe banked on a sandy spit, the kids- their bathing suit bellies full of cherries in ankle deep water. Little red fingers grabbed at sunlight. Fists full…
Terri Linton Boogie Down Girls I. Mister Softee croons his hood melody. We clamor and crowd, chests to backs filling our sweltering Bronx street. Sprinkles drip their rainbow sweetness from vanilla-wafered cones. Ready, set, they race down our bleached…
Jennifer Jean NATURE Zuma Beach We crowded the ice cream truck. Sweat & took a dip. Crowded the boom box. Messed with some words to Jackson’s Human Nature—why, why? (cuz they screw us that way!) We ran over there with…
Quinn Rennerfeldt Goodwill in the era of girls Her pink pen etching hearts into the top of my hand during our high school math class. End of semester. Breath peach- sweet and warm on my arm. The drone…