Category: poetry

The Last Trick | Eric Lochridge

 

After he learned the last trick
I let my dog go. I set him free.

Out on the trail around the lake,
we were alone.

I folded the leash into my pocket.
I unclasped his collar, telling him

I have taught you all you need to know. 
A grosbeak skittered across the path,

but my dog was not distracted. 
His eyes shone with new understanding.

Untethered, we finished the walk 
together. When we got home, 

I set my chin on his knee
while he watched TV. 

I Remember Good Days | Ellen June Wright

 

I remember days when my West Indian mother 
would drive us up to the cliffs and down the winding road 

that led to the picnic grounds at the edge of the Hudson River 
lapping like a living thing at the thick, stone retaining wall. 

On a Sabbath afternoon, we might watch men filling buckets 
with slick, gray fish from the even grayer river 

as we ate rice and peas, stewed chicken, and summer melon 
spitting out the smooth, black seeds. 

The chatter of children and their joyous laughter 
still echoes like waves in a conch shell to my ear. 

Mugshot | Sara Burge

Of course, my old boyfriend is shirtless 
in the article my mother sends me 
about two dudes stealing catalytic converters 
in church parking lots. At first
I think she’s discovered Florida Man memes. 
But this is Ozarks Man.
Fewer alligators. More meth.
            Meth? 
I text once I realize whose face isn’t looking at me, 
isn’t close to drunk or angry or even indifferent. 
Just a face on a shirtless body, 
a body so much older than the last time I saw it. 
Mom texts 
            Alcohol?
but I know the difference in wreckage, 
how the body puffs when pickled, eats itself 
when sleep or food is forgotten. I remember 
how he would help my mother around the house, 
clear gutters without being asked.
Every time I’ve thought of him since,
he is laughing. Not like this.

My mother says her heart is broken
            What on earth happened to him?

and I remember when I begged him
to tell me what he saw 
when he found my brother’s body 
three days dead. He started to cry 
then stopped, looked me dead in the eye.
            You don’t ever want to know that. 

War Time, 1942 | William Trowbridge

 

In the black-and-white snapshot, its spring,
and my father, in his civvies, cradles me, 
his baby son, in our back yard. I answer

his daddy smile with a dimpled grin 
at the moment another baby boy may be
getting his head bashed open on a tree 

by a drunken SS guard in Belzec as trucks
haul in more Jews for “processing.” In a month, 
my father will be sent by ship into battle,

unaware of the utter darkness there,
till his unit enters Buchenwald. 
The shadows in our yard, show it’s late.

Mass in Quarantine | Tania Runyan

 

            —Father Giuseppe Corbari, Saints Quirico
                        and Giulitta parish, Robbiano, Italy 

You didn’t want to say Mass alone, 
so you taped a hundred photos to the pews. 
These faces were made to be known: 

the eyes, mustaches, and cheekbones 
for years settling on your dreams like dew. 
You didn’t want to say Mass alone. 

And though now you have to imagine the cologne, 
the children scuffling in their restless stew, 
the faces are still touched and known 

from old snapshots alongside hasty phone 
selfies sent at your plea, your cue 
that you didn’t want to celebrate Mass alone. 

This morning, a woman’s hair like a lodestone 
caught the stained glass Blessed Virgin’s blue. 
These faces were made to be known, 

regardless of how far the virus has flown. 
You’re surprised this story has swept the news. 
You just didn’t want to say Mass alone 
without the faces you’ve always known.

Love Poem for My Mother | Patricia Aya Williams

 

Any more dead rats in the backyard? 

Not this week, Mom 
but you’ll be the first to know. 

            …  

Easy now. Smooth game of catch. The topic a handle 
we both can grasp.  

Are we learning? Or just tired of fraught?

Tellings over the years—
her tragic youth, my father 
who died young,  

how I am American and can therefore do anything I set my mind to.

Always her voice from the trenches, 
rifle rising, taking aim:

            life isn’t easy, you know  
            good isn’t good enough
            I’m the only one can tell you this

Was I the enemy? Was she? 
Who waved the white flag first?
Did we agree to forgo, forgive?

            …   

Lately she likes to tell me about the footlong orange centipedes 
of her wartime childhood—how 

                        they hung 

on the ceiling, glowing, in the dark… 

Portrait of a Body as Spring | Emmanuel Mgbabor

 

Unlike other Saturdays, it’s spring in my body,
& the vines creep through the church of my ribs 

as green wires. Just like that. Tiny daffodils 
sprouting in my nostrils. Sometimes, I leave 

my window open just to hear God combing 
through the forest. Trees as grandfathers

choreographing in the rain. If you were here 
earlier, you’d see the purple gazelles darting 

through the garden in my chest. Once, I fetched 
tap water in my palm —a pool of liquid mirrors—

watched it permeate, silvering into see-through
hands. Pink clouds. Pentatonic rain. A body 

alkaline enough to grow cherubs for mushrooms. 
On blue nights, bumblebees flood my living room, 

thinking the chandeliers as fluorescent hives—  
a smorgasbord of paper termites bumping against

the crystalline bulb. Again & again, my mouth overflows at each miraculous touch. Lips sharpening 

marble lips into edible blades. Brows wrinkled
like broken roads. & God fetching laughter 

from green branches. Outside, the moths become 
bubbles of daylight in my faux beard. & I 

would tender your face like a gold goblet, 
drinking all the dead butterflies & the rust & 

the miniature birds & the green universe pouring 
out of your eyes, filling my lungs with fresh water. 

Turnings | Rohan Buettel

 

They sleep entwined in the long drape of night.
One turning to one side, settling awhile,
then rolling back to the other. The other matches
the movement, turning in turn, nestling
back close together like silver cutlery
in a velvet-lined case. When one lies
on their back, the other passes a leg over,
settles again, one body half-resting across
the other. And so they pass the night,
comfortably sleeping together, not waking
despite all the turnings.