Tag: poetry
-
Bike Route, Minneapolis
by Joanne Esser Below street level I look up at familiar buildings that have grown Four stories, windows dark, cool inside, concealing business of the city. Along the edges, patches of red, orange, yellow with secret black hearts. Painted blossoms rise enormous above real ones as if they’re sisters. Sparrows hop…
-
On the Bridge After the Flood
by Deron Eckert A rubber duck floats down the riveralong with baby clothes and toys,a left behind walker since there is nowalking on water, and God knows what elsesince you can’t bear to see people’s livesrushed away in the flash of a floodthat you’ll never understand if you haven’tlived though one or did what you…
-
A Family Portrait
by Cecil Morris We poured our only daughter in the seawhere we’d left my father three years before.My wife held to me, I held to our son,and he upended the bag, her cremains,the grit and gosh of her, there where the seaseethed against the rocks, the waves in turmoilof coming, going, coming, rush and suckand…
-
Breaking Camp
by Michael Lauchlan Young parents caught in the hot,improbable grappling of marriage,we heaved into a dumpster a largemisshapen chair, filling our lungswith what remained of the week’s trashand years of curdled grease.We turned toward each other,toward a beach we’d all but forgotten,toward what we couldn’t hope to recognize–a footpath leading here. Your fatherhad taken some…
-
Eternal Life
by John Schellhase I remember going into a voting booth, the bluetruncated curtains rustling by my hair, my hand on my father’s jeans, the shoes of the other votersvisible around us. When we left, the sky was dark – the night falls early in November – and the cloudswere moving across the face of the…
-
Ampoule
by Angie Macri Race through the language, a circuit of lawslike men hunting for brides, rosein their teeth. Girls line up in white, bits of bonefitted as hourglass. The sand runsuntil it’s done. They cast their fathers’ names asideand take the new, covered by the title, Mrs.now. They never have to use their own name…
-
Ask Me and I’ll Tell You
by Annie Przypyszny about the woman who lives in an open grave. She’s not crazy. She’s versed in Edith Wharton, Emily Post, the final poems of Keats. Her Anne Klein dress is only slightly soiled, only a tad moth- nibbled. The oak leaves in her hair appear intentional. She adorns her rich brown walls with…
-
Logan
by Nick Visconti Here is the river no one owns, claimedby runoff sediments innervatingfloodplains. I look north and see jets,international, kipping above the clouds,banking on ground-level trust, the pilotshave eyes good enough to count seeds,the absurd amount of seeds lemons house,or the thread counts of a motel’s bed sheets.I’m here to search, and it only…