Love Poem: Rumi
You stood on the bank
of a river where
a fur coat was floating by—
You dove in, not knowing
how a bear would
end up wearing you—
—Timothy Liu
Useless
My lazy cat Kudzu
is an invaluable
aid to meditation…
—Bob Grawi
Words Matter
Call it welfare
and think dark men hanging on stoops,
rolling dice, drinking from beer cans in brown paper bags,
standing on street corners whistling at women walking
home from office jobs, jeering, smirking, sneering,
all the while giving each other macho high fives
and smiles and bro hugs.
Call it a safety net
and think ragtag children huddled around a fire
in a one-room schoolhouse, think a barefoot farmer in overalls
sandy-haired, sitting on a doorstep, his daughter, eyes blank,
seated in a chair, passive, hard, staring at the camera,
think job lost, the Great Depression.
Call them aliens
and think invaders from a distant world
hostile and green, the color of vomit, with long sinewy arms
eyes with an epicanthal fold, forked tongue, devil’s tail,
spying for an eastern emperor, sowing discord
leaving chaos in their wake.
Call them migrants
and think strangers wandering in the arid desert
exhausted from the sojourn and the heat, from the planning
and the walking, from the pleading and the talking
and the begging and the beatings
craving water, food, kindness, grace.
Call it an awkward gesture
and think an adolescent boy concealing a pimple
ripe with pus or perhaps placing his arm across his friend’s
younger sister’s shoulder, trying to scooch close enough
to smell her hair, to accidentally touch her breast,
the awkwardness of pubescent sex.
Call it what it was, what it is,
an embrace of nazism, fascism, apartheid,
a salute to the brownshirts, the ku klux klan, proud boys, oath keepers,
to bormann, to goebbels, bolsonaro, netanyahu, orban,
to adolf eichmann, adolf hitler. Call it a call to arms,
a negation of kindness, a denial of justice,
an abnegation of mercy.
—Shari Aber
Paradox on the Landscape
And Larkin said it will happen
soon: the annulment of nature.
It must be seen to be believed,
and that is the disaster:
When it is—at last—visible,
it is—at last—past all hope.
—Lachlan Brooks
A Barbaric Yawp for Robert Milby
(Robert Milby 1970-2024)
You’re not welcome in their propaganda chateaus
not with your gloating over caskets & corpses,
your elocution driving angels back to the rafters.
You recite Poe’s “Coliseum” proud as the President
reminding us everything’s better after falling into ruin.
Your attaché carries a well-thumbed library of con-
sumptives, suicides, & syphilitics, the old masters
of poisoned friendships bedded together at last.
You disguise yourself like a boarding school teacher
who parts his hair in the center as if to preserve 1912
& wears corduroy jackets rubbed raw at the elbows
by bachelorhood. Your Amish beard comes & goes.
Coffee alone keeps you alive. You begin each reading
with a pirate yelp & a few words for your favorite suicides.
Onion dirt is your native soil. Florida, New York,
your carnival burlesque as well as your haunted grounds.
Baudelaire schooled you in phantoms. Van Gogh’s ear
lets you hear the maternal abyss singing its anthems.
You can’t watch rain bead on a windshield without thinking
of Sylvia’s tears. Ted taught you the hunger of crows.
You survived forty days in the desert by drinking the mirage.
You’re the descendant of castle squatters, the ringleader of
the demented circus, the conductor of dry lightning overtures.
Donald Trump is lucky not to have you as a bastard son.
You’re too busy for an epitaph, but here goes:
You will not wear $1,000 alligator shit kickers
nor drive a harridan home from a car show.
You will not grace university halls
nor be feted by our contagious empire.
But you, yes, you, who still regrets
not being born under the Sign of Syphilis,
your sick flowers will stand as poetry.
—Will Nixon
Summer to Spring
Sadness is a chewable tablet
in the fall. The riptide
returns with a little less
water in the hourglass
than yesterday. There is a bottle
with your name on it, a plastic
orange, pills you don’t believe in
but I believe in you and your bare-
branch will. Every year it all ends
and each time,
leaves appear again.
—James Croal Jackson
bury us / they don’t know
terror rage like fever
dance along my cheeks
hot & bothered as the sun
at midday
on a friday, let them pray
instead, rip them out
by roots, crush
bloody flower petals between fingers
feels like pulling my heart
out of the earth, sprout
tendrils like grape vines
hold onto me
silence in the empty, echoes
loud enough to be prayer
i can take the sting out
let them pray
let me help you
wash the stains out
they try and bury us
they don’t know we are seeds
—Mikayla J. Dablan-Azony
Failure
Papers strewn across the room,
I tried to write the perfect poem…
But I got lost somewhere between
the words I wanted to say and
the ones I thought you would
want to see written across the page.
Now, it seems we’re at an impasse,
and this is all I have to show for it.
—Regina Bergen
I Shall Write
I shall dip my pen in gold
and write with the dust of stars
I shall write of ethereal heights
and abysmal depths
I shall write of you and me
—Fay L. Loomis
I remember / I forget
The forgetting comes first,
then the remembering
Worry at the empty side of the bed,
then remembering
Panic at the phantom aura on my ring finger,
then remembering
The urge to tell you first,
then remembering
This is the worst part I think
a part of my brain hasn’t read the morning news
Why didn’t you come home?
Where’s my ring?
Why can’t you tell me?
On the first day of therapy I told my analyst I identify as a widow
Sometimes it seems worse that you’re still out there
and I’ve already mourned you
Where did you go?
I forget,
then
I remember
—Alexandra Poole
oh my
why should I be surprised
everyone’s just doing what they always do
in the middle of a nightmare night
under a blood moon
I’ve been looking for you all along
like you’ve been looking for me
nothing you believed in is what it appears to be
the particular sand was a brutal sculptor
it’s all because of the butterfly, oh
the heartbreak of christmas trees and puppy dogs
as the setting sun turns on the sunny moon
the night breeze feels warm in my throat
please never forget today
something came across the screen and disappeared
an imitation ovation played, oh my!
and everything made me cry
—David Newman
Switchback Memory (towne historian)
There’s a changing fold a lost migration
and a deli on Dire to die for Charlie who came
from a good home but veered left at the ley lines
Carla on Kenneth and the ruckus she caused
Trixie from fourth during riot week where anarchists
argue and pause the moon Bill who gets giddy
whenever an ambulance passes Annie w/one
blue eye Kiki teases but doesn’t mean it
Serenades burn in small river towns
—Mike Jurkovic
Overlook
From the mountain top I saw
vast across the landscape, slopes, flats,
rises, and other overlooks less
than where I stood. The road’s curve
disappears far below. No borders
other than river. Does that hawk
which spirals above the overlook
make a bend in the thermals that carry
wishes for peace? Can something
simple as a song contribute to that long
arc through the universe? There is
no way to know what bestows grace
where or when. All we can do is climb
(declination more arduous than ascent)
somewhere to get a better view
for as long as we can. So, when we do
what we do every day, dry our hands,
gaze through a window, stretch, scratch,
stare at a screen, there is some vision
back of our eyes which daily
isn’t in our sight.
—Guy Reed
An Understanding
I don’t know how most things work
not you
not me
not the dryer in the laundry room
I go about the days
a bubble of ignorance around me
as I dissect my love for you
I want to see it splayed
pinned on the table
get close to it
safely
I want to understand it
how it got here
what it wants
what it can do
how it makes me move
why it makes me cry
—Jannelle Roberts
Cahill
By 20, Eggy had lost all his hair,
Hence his nom de guerre,
Had a dome like a baby’s shiny bottom—
Going bald was no biggie for Eggy,
It wasn’t his coif or a lack thereof that got him
In the door at The Quilted Giraffe:
He was the best pastry chef they’d ever seen.
Besides, half the time his pasty bean
Was crowned with a toque.
No, Sean Cahill’s battle was coke.
Those 80s Manhattan kitchens ran on blow
And Eggy, well, he just couldn’t say “No.”
—Patrick Walsh
An Afternoon
she was in her wheelchair
and there were scrapes on the walls from the wheels
and the calendar had days
x’d out
that hadn’t happened yet
i was in the recliner by the window
and we were watching soap operas
and the carpet was worn down
and the faucet was leaking
but the sun was coming in
bright and warm as ever
and she wheeled over to me
in the chair
by the window
and she took my hand
and she held it
her fingers entwined with mine
her hands soft and warm
like only a mother’s can be
and she looked in my eyes
directly
and she said
no one understands me better than
you
and i knew what she meant
and i smiled and held her hand harder
and for that moment we were perfect
and everything was the way it used to be
and the sun was just so
right
there
and for the last time
we both felt whole
and then we let go
and went back to the tv
and nothing else was said
and didn’t need to be
—Ian Gillis
Figurehead
I positioned myself to lead the way
But when the time came
I found myself hardened, inflexible
Unable, perhaps unwilling,
to change my direction
or anyone else’s
As the rocks loom closer with each passing day.
—Elise Bruce-Grey
This article appears in March 2025.
