Louis Templeman She spoke softly, calmly recounting her pain through a furnace of litanies that helped her hold on to the ...

Kevin Hadduck I have seen that I must Confess to ignorance I do not know you, although I have loved you twenty years The lifting of you ...

Ed Madden beginning with four lines from Taha Muhammad Ali If, over this world, there’s a ruler who holds in ...

Carol Tyx Like the iris in the side yard, I have stopped blooming. Dig me up, O Spirit, and split me; where I have grown calloused, br ...

Kathleen Hirsch I cannot tell you why I taste death; the cupboards are reasonably arranged, the windows clean as rain ...

Jasmine Marshall Armstrong The bough we clasped while climbing towards phantasmal blue has broken— we lie on concrete, beggin ...

Daniel Skach-Mills My breath pluming white into December could, to God, be incense rising out of the puffing thurible of my body. Up here, ...

Patricia Giragosian The eightieth soldier was blown up in Salahuddin Province. The eightieth soldier was blown ...

Donald W. Shriver Jr. From far-out depths they come, swell swelling swell, 'til cresting they salute the sky and tumble toward ...

Rose Marie Berger The narcotraficante commanded me in gestures, take off your blouse. Then he jerked it, scattering buttons— smooth ...

Murray Bodo As if it matters noticing the migrant workers— two to a wheelbarrow of concrete— mending the walls of the rich that exclude t ...

Clifford Rivera "The wind blows wherever it pleases." Word? The scene is played out. We need some Eden! Were Abba the DJ, ...

Byron Rempel-Burkholder This afternoon, sir we nailed God down He's at the back of the property He's going nowhere, sir His fe ...

Deb Baker I went there once, to the place you’re imagining. It was purple, with wild geraniums under green-bright stars. All the con ...

Michael Borich After the olive groves at Samothrace and fog which billowed up from a green sea, the rocky sheep path an ...

Kathleen Gunton She left with her sack of stones and one dying rose, fragrant as Pinot Noir. She left ...

Christi Kramer At the feet of the mothers. The safest place in the world for you is curled up on the com ...

Amanda Rogers Your letter through the slot slid to the floor and lay quite still all day, until returning home from work I seized and tor ...

Newton Miner If ever you have wakened in the night— the steep blue night, and waited for the tears— then I must tell you— ...

Katie Chilton Driving east on Jackson Street one morning, only a couple of blocks from the bungalow on Abe Street where a few years ag ...

Wanda Fries The poor are with you always— The poor are with you always— Curled against a retaining wall ...

Michael Borich Was the cry they heard a kestrel’s or a distressed gull or a passing soul or one not wanting to, a disciple asked as fog burned off the harbor and ...

Murray Bodo beneath debris and stench a hand your hand withered stretched forth waiting for someone’s be healed ...

Luci Shaw “Two weeks on, the Earth is still vibrating from the massive undersea earthquake off Indonesia Sunday…reverberations like the r ...

Debra Rienstra The Child Jesus Speaks The Child Jesus Speaks my mother bleeds for m ...

Debra Elramey Untitled Drive north down Highway 301, past Untitled Drive north down High ...

Kristin Berkey-Abbott Untitled In this month of dehydration, Untitled In this month of d ...

Louis Templeman Untitled Against the ugly annals of Untitled Against the ugly annals of ...

Barbara Crooker It' It’s a sweet June day, and the mockingbirds are singing, as are the rubber tires of cars on the road, and both of these sou ...

Joel Kurz I have climbed out of the depths where human ash and soil comprise a pyramidal mound covered by the green of life. Here women, m ...

Louise Murphy The earth is eating all the little birds. It feasts, grows fat. Their eyes are stones, black jewels we rattle in our pockets ...

Janet W. Boatner 1. Outside the cathedral I wept against a pillar of black stone ...

Richard Hoffman Hephaestos No god at all, you do not work the forge (conscripts and captives, the poor, do that). You work the till. No one ...

Scott Cairns Availing space in which we live and move and come to glimpse the import of our being. Availing space in which we live and move and co ...

Linda Mills Woolsey At the regional airport in Waco, At the regional airport in Waco, on the third day of the war, we stand barefoot, as if on sac ...

Jene Beardsley Untitled Normal Page "…as if religion were a state of shock, deep, peaceful shock, that…men like these are driven into by the ...

Carol Hamilton He died in a munitions explosion, the exquisite artist who painted the tamed bird, an irony, as the a ...

Ananda Robinson Blessed are those who wash their robes, Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life a ...

Fredrick Zydek You must learn to say prayers that become time travelers, prayers that can trumpet past a guilty conscience, past our attics of guess and superstition. ...

E. Ethelbert Miller (for Reetika) Dead woman loving him from her grave. Is this the end of love? I ...

Jill Alexander Essbaum And shall I rise up like a loaf of bread from being so dead? Should I walk towards the light, or is it a tr ...

Sarah Rossiter (Poetry, Departments) ...

Demetria Martinez You see them You see them Everywhere If you choose: You see them Everywhere If you cho ...

Marilyn Robertson Rain tick tocks in the downspouts. We rise to ordinary time too soon returned. Yellow buses take children a ...

Andrea Ayvazian if we dug a huge grave miles wide, miles deep and buried every rifle, pistol, knife, bullet, bomb, bayonet if we jumped up ...

Cynthia Gustavson Hundreds of years growing on a steep hill, desolate, aging despite scarce nourishment, they wait for history to recogni ...

Kate Bowman Joseph Ross Indigo true purest blue, a man on a cliff waits with open hands ...

Rose Marie Berger Go to the Cyclops, to their metalworks, to buy your armaments— they with concentric ringwork branded into their forehead ...

Matt Humm for Ash Wednesday As grey eyes adjust to the Darkness, Minaret evergreens—nun-like—stand ...

Marilyn Robertson Possibilities A teacher sits down at the feet of her students. Singing is heard in an abandoned village. ...