Category: Poetry
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Bargaining At My Husband’s Bedside, Coronary Step Down Unit, 2002
By Jeanne Bryner “So we move another summer closer to our last summer together—“ –Linda Pastan Your groin’s bruise, purple like mother’s iris. They bloom in June just for your birthday, she lied to the girl I was. The fair’s gone; we can’t be eighteen again. There’s a bell to ring, but no sledge for…
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my father loves me best at the dim sum table
By Sabrina E. Siew we sit opposite each other, a Sunday tradition. the chrysanthemums pushed down in hot water, like the knees of his tar-haired child on American soil. only one teacup quiet on tablecloth, he doesn’t ask for more, but orders my bing seoi before I can speak. here, I am little, the lazy…
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In Praise of Dirt
By David Salner Dirt, dust, and mud; gumbo of ground bone; two million femurs in wet earth of the wide and charming Volga; Tibia shards underfoot near the placid Elbe; not to mention cranium bits along the meandering waters of the Vistula; and the tidal Ota, whose sediment is home to delicate wrists, all those…
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Assisted Living
by Jeanne Bryner Beside his chair walks a shadow but where’s the candle to lift, to light what patron saint protects him? Our town’s wheelchair man, legs bent and angled, crooked feet shod. Long ago he knew the forge; see leather gloves, fingers cut away? Twice a day he slogs himself to town then back.…
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I Want the Sunset That You Want
By Daniel Edward Moore but that doesn’t make me the pastoral police. At least, not over the acres of sky known for their fluffy feel-good frenzy. According to the ocean’s cold crashing hymns in the church of drown, no don’t, there’s little time left for the skin to burn like incense in the temple of…
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Pure Fool
We had ham & Brie on our saltines, fortified wine. & even though we were ill met by the needling rain & springtime’s anarchic phlegm, it was a grand picnic…