Letters
I see you through your writing, you say.
Handwriting.
Do you mean…
The belly of a “D”
The muscle of an “M”
The curve of a “B”?
The thrill of seeing a lover’s script
With words penned just for you…
So I leave sticky notes under your flaxen sheets
A reminder.
Remember me.
Remember me here.
In this room
In your bed
Laughing.
I want to be a good host
In prose
And in this unnamed ship
For however long we
Sail on this intimate tributary
Navigating….
I want to make the voyage meaningful
It pleases me to be loving
To be kind and thoughtful
And in return be greeted with
Sweet petit fours of appreciation
Fondant made of kindness
Fruity layers of quiet desire
You say you only want to hear my poems of you.
To hear your name slide inside my mouth
Consonants and vowels scraping, ever so gently, along the ridges of my molars.
Your name kissed by my lips
Kissing words
It is a swarm when Soft kisses Warm.
Do not fall in love…
You warn, with your writing.
Do not be so attached that you cannot discard the parts that hold you back-
That hold your story back.
Life lessons.
If I pen this poem
And send it pony express
You will see my script
See me.
My mouth full of words
My hands shaping letters
My heart stamped on the return address.
—Ilyse Simon
Calli’s Career Day Talk at Linus’s School
At first I was a little worried about
the singing, you know?
Like, am I screeching?
Will someone actually
be attracted to this sound that’s coming
out of my gob?
Then it became more about, like, is this
an okay thing to do—basically, making dudes
crash into rocks and cliffs and stuff and drown
and whatnot?
Kinda heavy, right?
I was looking for work
and just fell into sirening.
I graduated Paul Mitchell and I knew,
like, I knew, hair was not my path.
Just like I knew I was going be head
cheerleader junior year and that my
chem teacher was into me.
I used to think I was really putting out
some wild energy junior year, but when
the knowing stuff just continued, I figured
it was around to stay.
Then I met Patti, who pretty much
knows everything all the time everywhere.
She is amazing!
And that got me thinking about
what comes next.
I probably would not have thought of
the oracle gig on my own.
And definitely not if I was cutting and
coloring and perming hair!
You can always change
the path you’re on.
For reals
—Lori White
The Car on My Battery Died
We had plans to meet in Athens, NY,
above the shop, after we checked in
at a campsite. The battery died.
I climbed Cabot in the western Catskills,
to get a signal—flat summit like any
on that old plateau—and spoke to him.
I was speaking to John Telford Gregg,
the writer no one has heard of.
He said they could do a jump start.
His novel, Local Stop in the Promised Land,
is a long prose poem, teeming,
every page a word like what you dreamed,
what you dreamed to write. We missed
that soirée, we went home.
John was a sage, a mentor, unforgettable.
Never miss a last chance.
—Steve Clark
4 a.m. Friend
Around about 4 a.m.
I lost faith in my novel
which finally allowed me
to fall asleep & dream
of a salamander
no prettier than mud
but big, big as an iguana
butting his soft hammer
of a head into my chest bone
like a puppy desperate
to be petted & he wasn’t alone
an ostrich had lowered
her hard feathered joke of
a head to claim her own
spot on my chest &
she wasn’t alone either,
a humming bird & a skunk,
a menagerie had crowded me
to hear a heartbeat so strange—
so fast, so slow, so loud,
so lumbering, so flagellating
it could only be human
& what was this novel
I wanted to write
about people dying
in the fires of Hoboken,
a life I’d once lived,
or wished I’d once lived,
or regretted I hadn’t,
but not the one
the salamander
heard in my heart.
His head wasn’t as hard
as my breastbone,
but he kept pressing
as if burrowing home.
—Will Nixon
The Anniversary
heart broken
never mends really
nuts & bolts loosen
little by little
untighten
anchoring
gravity unfastens
automatically let go
regulation
boundary
safety net
nothing left but
this spirit
unscrewed….
—C. P. Masciola
The Politics of Today
Amanda said: Grab!
Maisy said: You’ve grabbed enough for a thousand generations!
Barnaby said: I’ll wrap you in words, spin you in jest,
you are nothing but a point of data to me
Gavin said: I will actually kill you
Then the table they all sat around turned pitch black
The walls of the room turned black
The four of them sat in darkness, within nothing, and were nothing
And they all felt rather embarrassed at the situation
Then, an eight foot, even darker figure rose up from the ground
emitting a low hum
Amanda heard: You have flown too close to sadness
Maisy heard: You’ve missed more than you realize
Barnaby heard: I’m leaving you forever, now I really will be
an abstraction to you
Gavin heard: I will actually kill you
Then the figure sank back into the ground
Amanda said: I want to die
And then her wish was granted
And her last thought was that that too was deeply, deeply saddening.
—Tristan Geary
You, and Pomegranates
We talked about pomegranates once:
The mess of them,
And the fact that there’s nothing sweeter, nothing more lovely
Than a pomegranate seed, after a long, cold December
(Which is just a December, in Massachusetts
The place that saved me)
And that night I went home alone and I thought of the person
I used to be
And I asked Reddit to cure me and found the entire world in the pit
of a Kalamata olive
And things made sense for the first time since I stopped believing
in God.
We talked about love, once:
The mess of it,
And the fact that there’s nothing sweeter, nothing better
Than love, after nineteen years of gritted teeth, clenched fists, and belligerent optimism
(Which is just life, in this world
The place that made me)
And that night you walked into moving traffic wearing all black
and I found your ocean eyes in the face of the moon
And we made love to an upbeat folk song about leaving home,
and I christened you “home” and decided to stay awhile
And there is something to be gained from reaching out to touch futility, and then turning the word around and changing the letters until you get something akin to beauty
To familiar.
And maybe that sounds implausible, but forgive me,
For I do love
You, and Pomegranates
And even myself, some days:
The mess of it all.
—Abilene Adelman
Will of the Wisps
As children we imagine monsters rambling in the darkness,
who grow on the waste of prayers for reason; for purpose.
Then darkness becomes sacred; the setting of love,
where the tender moon is cradled in satin blue,
and all the senses warm down, distill into the heat of life,
and romance is a viscous salt–a heart and soul in the heavy breath—
the smell and touch and taste of night.
And we love and we love and we love—
fireflies at the edge of an ancient dusk—
but we remember the frigid eyes of death at our backs,
and our hearts hiccup upon the gaps of oblivion,
anxious for the betrayal–for love’s mask to fall
and reveal the old abyss and its tongue
that laps, to the final bitter drop,
our soiled soul matter.
—David Perry
A Day in the Life
This is not a poem about waking
to the smell of coffee,
or looking out the window of a small hotel.
There are no pathways
dividing woods green and silent,
or sunbursts through cotton clouds above.
The stars do not glitter,
or the moon brightly glow,
and rainbows do not come after rain.
On this day still and boundless
heat weighs heavy as the wind blows;
homebound neighbors mutter, questioning
their lives and what will become of the world.
This poem avoids the future,
remembering the past and searching for light
and love and awe
in the photos on the walls and
the voices of the knowing.
This poem is for now,
not fearing what comes next.
—Amanda Tiffany
Happy Birthday
(a poem for Tim)
My heart is humming like a bird
whose nectar is the palm of your fist;
My heart is like an apple tree
whose boughs are fruit-fat and
sun-kissed;
My heart is like the Shawangunk ridge
whose rock is older than our dreams;
My heart is gladder than all these
singing Happy Birthday to thee.
—Alexandria Wojcik
Playground Pieta
Hail Mary Mac
Mac, Mac
All dressed in
Black, black, black.
Full of grace, grace,
Grace with speed
Three skillful claps.
Schoolyard sign of cross transposed
Criss-cross shoulders, thighs, bestowed
With three pious claps
And repenting cry
Three desperate prayers:
July
July
July
—Alyssa Almanza
Son (Addicted)
In between, try to bridge one moment to the next.
Soothing the edges as I go; as best I can
Standing near you, from over here, ready to catch you.
Pretending. As best I can.
You – fiercely distant.
Then, in one moment, so much my little boy.
But, only for one moment.
When, again, we are trying to bridge one moment to the next.
—Louise Frances
Antennas
Like giant antennas
Trees take in messages
From the sun and stars
Then cast their leafy spells
—Don Ferber
Photos
I want to climb
Back into the
Photos
Settle in the grass
Take deep breaths
Glance around
Make it not be the last
—Nancy Layne
This article appears in August 2025.
