When the apples in the bed began to decay,  they rolled and tumbled like children. Yellow  and red, the luster increased with my reverence.  When the fruits decay, I must leave you again.  Back to the world made for the dead. It was  a good effigy you saw , he said. In the Northland,  I depart to search for Lake and stumble upon a training  for corpses in the cold, where everyone stays solid.  When I was a little girl, I just did not know how  to comfort her; the death of a r

It hurts before you feel it. Static in your throat. A swarm. Laughter bubbling. Wings needle through the mist with crisp optimism.  The first hit’s a surprise. The next, a testament. You open your mouth wide, eyes, locked shut. A fuzzing cannon ricochets your molars. You like the way your teeth are pinballed. How their wings get caught between your canines. A spiderweb. A Venus fly trap. You catch one and try for more. As many that would impress your little brother. You open

after Mahmoud Darwish and Agha Shahid Ali only the middle. Not the end, of course not, that bitter dread. Nor the beginning, even the excitement, the incessant lust, the feeling of being the only two people who ever felt this heady rush, nor the slow learning of the other, the delightful surprises, the bitter quarrels and passionate making up. But the middle, when our bodies are softer especially around the middle, when the little narrow bed is barely big enough for one, and

Joi Haskins is a poet and medical student from Maryland.

May I never be forgiven the circumstances of my birth.  1. There was no question about it—the body had shown up independently in the middle of the street. Not on the concrete, where she would have gone gray around the edges, stepped over like the masses of the unfortunate that line the curbs of cities. No, her body was laid out on a rolling gurney, hands placed over each other on top of her stomach. Her hair hung down over the hard plastic sides of her makeshift bed, swaying

Firsthand experience comes last. This is because no one knows the right way to say sorry. Don’t apologize. I throw my left shoe at your face. It leaves a dent.  You think it’s funny. You think it’s funny that I am writing  a confessional poem. You say good night to the sun and open a rift in the air in such unearthly innocence.  One of these days, you will fail to step out the front door. And I will be looking after you, you who broke your two ankles and lost your right eye.

Over a shared bottle of Yellow Tail shiraz we reminisce about our youth, when we knew each other, recall all the things we’ve done in our ten years apart, brag of how happy we are now. I wonder if he sees me for the girl I was those years ago. I know I see him as the same boy, leaning on the wall outside the Science Lab, the sun hitting his honey-coloured hair, lines carved on his upper arm from all the Judo. He tells me he fights still. Of course, he says in that same blasé

We went to her wedding on Wednesday, then her funeral the following Friday. We’d never seen her so happy—so joyously carefree—scattering smiles like petals down the aisle. From two brides to one widow…no one knew what to say. Death was a coat of paint that hadn’t dried, just applied. We went from boisterous bells to stifling silence; none of us knew consolations could come so soon after congratulations. A union established and expired in the time it takes to pass through the

The problem after "There’s no place like home," however, is that there’s still the arrest warrant for Toto outstanding—unless Miss Gulch in Kansas happened to expire just as the wicked witch melted in Oz. In my version, Gultch melts—that is, relents— and grateful Dorothy learns responsibility at last, so when in crowded places keeps her dog on a leash, his life in her hands. James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven:

after Nat Hentoff * When he drums, every body is involved in a greater going.             On a peak of exultation, Blakey’s crackling rolls announce a groove that opens the pulse to immediacy.                        Blakey’s explosions  change direction, ignite tenderness in the band, flights of unity. There are times when Art is centripetal, welcomes anyone who is.  This is an erasure poem, constructed entirely of the liner notes Nat Hentoff wrote for the album Free for All

You've got to hand it to the old girl;   at seventy-five she’s in training    with a backpack, bound for Alaska   to trek over the Chilkoot Pass   to the haunts of her prospector father,  who made his stake   in that icy gold rush,   then used it to become a geologist.   But don't get her started or you'll have to hear  the whole family history and, to boot,  see her demonstrate   what her guide told her last trip   about meeting grizzlies:   Crooning, she backs toward   the

My neighbor uses poison to kill rats. Sometimes foxes indirectly.  He makes a point of saying he remembers me. Maybe   not point . Maybe he can’t help it. Some recognitions need  to be uttered. Or be recognized as need. He makes me nervous. I have built something, in my body, but there’s no part of the body that won’t spill. Even your bones will do it. He uses anticoagulants.    Catherine Rockwood lives near Boston. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two chapbooks of

At first, the neon light is taken away and closes itself,— the signs remove their name, the subway forgets how to go. Every brick throws itself apart from the mortar, every  window pulls back from the glass and is the same sand. The roads curve in, held as tightly as a mouth that reveals no secrets. I say to myself— there is no loss if anything  comes back to its birth. There is no loss if the street light  is not bright, if the clock does not make a sound, if the skyline des

He was good at tracing things believed lost.  Once he found a child.  Scarfing hamburgers with workmates perving on lunchbreak girls among the flow of shoppers outside a crowded mall, their sarcastic scores out of ten for sexiness were interrupted when a frantic mother blundered by.  Slipping from their land rover he asked quick pertinent questions then directed his trailing mates to search in different directions.  After footing it fluidly through the pack inside he triumpha

Someone has written a sign beside the remaining stumps Be careful where you’re going . And I think they’re right. In the grounds where the interviews took place many years ago. And the candidates were little more than acorns in jackets. They had come to become what they became in different Ways. One by failing and the other by succeeding. In ties With Windsor knots to go with the lumps in their throats They watch their accents and try to tuck their roots in. That’s always the

Our lines stretch and waver; pieces of DNA from an ancient spool reach out tentative to touch parallel lives, wanting to envelop,...

森闺 献给飞飞 临春我带你游乡港，远处不仅有灯还有星。 Deep Chambers For Feyfei When it is almost spring, I take you to roam along the village harbor. In the...

It doesn’t take any particular talent to get laid  Mr. Sayfer proclaims in his unannounced presentation to the 8th grade where we sit...

will they remember how she needed to feel the ocean, how it brought her visions of a lover left behind in another life, before she was...

I read a poem that takes up half the book. There are boys crying in the cornfields of its pages. A living will tucked into the stanzas of...