Falling  By Pilar Graham Stubborn Mule Press – 2025 Devil’s Elbow, MO Having never encountered the first name “Pilar” I looked it up and learned it is of Spanish origin and comes from “Maria del Pilar” which means Mary of the Pillar. This was a title given to the Virgin Mary after her appearance – an apparition seen by St. John the Apostle – on a pillar in Zaragoza, Spain. And so was born the honorific name Pilar, denoting strength and steadfastness. Ms. Grahams’s collection

In orchids, he multiplied the room until the balcony broke open. Four floors underground, he grafted the apartment to compose a deep poem. Each depth has its own darkness— until he found one private enough to write in, a fragment of shadow. An invisible clock-hand spun him tight; his gaze bent with its curve. Almost swallowed by the abyss of his own eyes, he wondered: If the battery sleeps, can I stay awake outside time? What difference for one who is already the sand in an h

"At the Oncology Clinic" Did our tumors beat in sync across the decades? My mother, resigned and afraid— me waiting, always, for it to be over. Our church prayed for her death, certain it was the will of God she suffered this wither of flesh and bone. I, having learned, tell no one and so they can’t pray for me, no calls toward some divine being to kill me quick. I stand alone in an ice-slicked parking lot, the clouds weeping snow. That Once in A Lifetime She asks if I’ve eve

The dresser top is scarred; bird’s-eye maple  marred with scratches, a layer of dust fine as  powdered sugar seeping into the deep grooves  caused by many moves and careless movers,  the wood old and dry, crying for a soft rag to  smooth and soothe its surface with gentle touch  of healing wax. This is your grandfather’s dresser,  the one he hand-picked, fifty years in the furniture  business, for your grandmother to hand down to  you, and then you gave it to me in the first

Your thumb’s gotten you into trouble before, but never too much for you to quit the life. You haven’t pressed an accelerator in longer than you can remember, but a week ago you were in the middle of the Badlands and now here you are in the Appalachians, full of pizza bread and armed with directions. “Just take Jericho all the way down past the churches,” the trucker (whose name may or may not have been Joshua) said, “and once you’re on 2 you’ll cross Crooked Creek twice and y

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.

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

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...

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...

I. jennette, i’ve encouraged my mother to delete her will. it’s unnecessary. would there be a squabble, the kind siblings wield when they...

1 climbs the bluff to the oceanside cemetery— patches of pink plastic geraniums and plaster angels baseball caps, rosaries in fenced...

Shreds of what was once a suit hang tattered from his thin shoulders. Looking like he has walked a thousand miles, he leans against the...