Step by step the nights
Step by step the nights taste from weeds salted down though even shorelines decay, taking hold between the dirt and one last look as dew half marshland, half within reach where her breasts are forever water and from this darkness the thirst you use for mist and bitterness, surrounded by rocks and in your throat her lips saying things, ordinary things.
Read MorePossession
I wander through my parents’ house cataloging items in my head thinking, “This is mine. This is mine, too,” saying, “Mom, you really should get someone in here to help you clean.” my mother won’t let a stranger touch her things, she says, all the things my father bought her before he passed. my mother doesn’t need any help from me, she says. Everything is fine. my sister calls me late at night wonders how our mother’s doing, wants to talk about assisted living, a nursing home clearing out the house. she wants the zebra lamps, she says, she...
Read MoreThe Plankhouse Revisited
photo of the Plankhouse by Wade Allen I. The awesome mist of some unknown flower Sprindges my voice into my father’s words — This plantation’s not what we used to work, When Pap George, his father, David, held our Future in slavery, though we knew that its hour Had come: I think of the women — ...
Read MoreThe Confluence
Who was my mother in the sunlight as she stared into the confluence of the Blue and White Niles? Two ancient rivers joining—the conjunction point— now as one, flowing north. What kept her there—her staring— beyond the bright sun, as taxis left, the National Geographic photographer who was so friendly disappearing into his car, as the sun dipped and darkness shut without the usual red dusk of the Midwest? What was she thinking as she stood with her young daughter in a war-torn Sudanese country in 1959? Maybe it was our emergency landing in Addis Ababa or the recent death of my...
Read MoreNational Poetry Month, Week 3 Wrap-Up
“Fire” by A. Anupama – The final installment in A. Anupama’s lovely elements series “Geese at Midnight” by Lyn Lifshin – A nature poem about spring returning “The Spring in Michigan” by Joseph Dionne – A blend of classical references and spring imagery “Zoom_3” by R.S. Carlson – A close-up view of nature and photography “Difficult, Tennessee” by Terry Minchow-Proffitt – A gently funny look at coping with life’s difficulties. “My Love Commutes” by editor Alyce Wilson –...
Read MoreEvening Light
Let’s meet where the tables are empty at 7. I can remember, and so do not have to imagine, the April evening light coming in off the bricks, through the glass rattled like snare skin by the bass thrum of busses and trucks on 65th. The tables round and black, they really are like pools of emptiness with glasses of water suspended by life’s magic antigravity effect, to say nothing of the orbits of planets, that successful reluctance to plummet into their suns, even when life may not have begun on most of them, there is no one to meet, no table taking the evening light back into...
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