Chilkat TrineSuddenly, sunlight. The inlet dabs green eyes.Damp campers unzip flaps, luff out wet flies. An eagle carves the shoreline. Crows stampede. A shadow dives to feed where shadows feed. Th…

ALT: a statue with a crown on its head and a long tongue sticking out

YouTube video by Roland S. Martin

Sign HereThere are numberless ways to fail,to make a break, to cause a crack.to cry, to weep, to sob, to wail,to exit, to vacate, to bust, to bail,to go with no chance of coming back.There are numb…

YouTube video by FlorenceMachineVEVO

YouTube video by Diya Eats Well | Diya Eggleston

ALT: a man with a beard is hugging a young girl in a video game

YouTube video by STRANGE ÆONS

Commencing the Dawn of DayOut in the yard, I hang my clothes and sheetsin the humid muck of gnats and wild ryewhile my arms shine raw, bead with sweat. The sweetrain beckons beyond, where some floc…

Paperback SoldierPaperback soldier, so nice to seeHe who tells a bedtime story to meFairytales, fiction, and poems galoreWould you tell me one I haven’t heard before?Paperback solider, write me a t…

Ghazal of a DivorceHis shock collar on the dog’s sleek neck—tight is not the word—no more bothering the neighbors. Polite is not the word.She gardened , pretended not to think of the nice guyat wor…

YouTube video by Outlaws with TS Madison

EPITAPH I’ve loved it all, and I’ll miss it when I’m gone My life’s been my art, and I’ve told it in my song. — Eilen Jewell, “Rain Roll In”Let me be buried where I have livedIn these pagesWhere I …

Kathleen Jamie on the Giant Tortoises

Coaching NarrativeCoaches who emphasizeCharacter that they buildMostly lead, I surmise,Teams that are getting killed The Country Craft StoreWe ventured to a rural country craft store,Admiring all t…

WINTER SOLSTICETo stay at home and watch the sun go down,And let the world turn on its starlit wayInto the night, after the shortest day—To be nobody, consciousness unboundTo name and form. To be t…

Table in the wildernessthat absence we have begun to know so wellseated in our souls as worlds rushand time’s chatter runs in unspun threads, adrift, we pass the bread, make lightsit in silent comp…

Act 2The rhythm of the residence is preserved at the hour as the clock strikes.The furniture remains intact. The last of its fledglings flown.What was a home shines through the vacant hallways.Echo…

What Moves UsDesigns for towns, these places usually moveto the sounds of the river, the constant rushingExpansion of soil or retracting floods, provethe diligence of generations in pasts brushingG…

YouTube video by FINAL FANTASY XIV

ERAT HORA She placed her jacks back in their small red box then squeezed her red rubber ball hard as prayer. A spot behind a technical handbook she built for storing childish things awaits her hand…

SingIf you can hear meon a winding thread of lightgrab a can and singfrom the moon tides to the shorephosphorescence you will bring Leisel Brex is a trauma survivor with PTSD who strives to maintai…

No Street by Which You Might ReturnMost any day you’d take your walk -Sometimes the dogwoods were in bloom,Or sometimes in a winter gloom -You’d linger with some friend and talk.Our streets were sa…

YouTube video by ihatevoyager

ALT: a girl in a cheerleading outfit is holding a dog while another girl looks on

YouTube video by ContraPoints

ClarityThrough my glasses the world becomes as perfect as a pictureand blurs of color coalesce to form a clear-cut structureI see the shadows of the moon become as clear as sketchesand the stars be…

SpringNothing melts my heart like spring.The heavens crack open, reveal the great blue,And a warm light shines on every dear thing.Trodding off the path, mud on my shoe,I emerge from my den of wint…

SchwaThe single trick of British diction’sstripping sounds of forms and frictions.All non-consonantals areground down into the mighty Schwa.UUUUUUH.Grey incarnate as a vowel,projected from yo…

And Then…I remember that night we met, Ken. Sophomore year.I remember we French-kissed on Lina’s twin bed.I remember your friend Tom snapped, “He isn’t queer.”I remember him making that perfectly c…

HyadesWhere are you now? When night by night goes by, And all I have are memories and dreams—Of rainy scenes of you in late July,Unmoved by all that acts, but only seems,And never is what it may se…

Bookmarks and HeadstonesMy shelves lift volumes covered soft and hard,a thousand books I’ve given brief regard.Slower gazing reveals the multitudeall clasping slender markers that protrudelike flow…

Alt: A person in a gorilla suit is standing in the woods with trees in the background. They give thumbs up, point to the camera, and then punch to the side.

Taps Seven rifles blast three times—part dance, part prayer, a piece of theater.The black marble of the mausoleum separatesthe quick from the dead,the feeling from the numb,The speaking from the du…

Upon Reading “If We Do Not Take Action Now to Address Declines in Insect Abundance and Diversity…” on Election Day 2024I did not intend to write this villanelle. But our nation has sunk low in the …

DewdropsThe trees wear thick and milky leaveslike a holidaymaker in a yellow Panama hat;The grass is short, and the meadows cleanedlike a woman purified after giving birth;The flowers have cast off…

Funeral A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet. O, a pit of clay for to be made, For such a quest is meet. Shakespeare Life has been a thankless dream, and I the only thing real,…

A Villanelle from Bad DreamsI don’t have many nightmares anymoreAbout cars or boys. The sun has yet to setOver that streak of violent desert goreAt the diner: I have lunch with the Madonna Whoreand…

ALT: a cat is reading a book on military strategy .

The BassoonHe holds it at a slant, its longfirm body poised to do him wrong.The fingering complexities,the double reed, so many keys:all make it hard to play the thingat all, much less to make it s…

MoonHiking home after dark, the moon distracts me as only moons can do, she slides through clouds, shows me gilt mica on a gnarled tree stumpthe trail flashes bright, then dark again. The silent tr…

The Good Literary Citizen Pays Fees to be Murdered by MFA AssassinsYour poems do not fit what we are looking for; a big fat NO,Your turns don’t fit our editorial needs; are too dark and mismatched;The...