Requiem 21

by Lindsay Surmacz

“Your strength is what made you The Great One./ Not the might that scarred the sky three thousand times,/ but the will that forged broomsticks and soup cans/ into silver scepters and golden gloves.”

comfort in ten landscapes

by anaïs peterson

“2. the notable absence of acute danger/
a. soft orange evening light and faded blue couch covers/
b. mass produced lemon bars over dusted with powdered sugar that are somehow still delicious”

Counting

by Gail Langstroth

“March winds vex pine boughs/forsythia says we love you, air; /we love you/ my shadow claws cement’s/ cache”

(haiku)

by Don Wentworth

calling across

the alley, window to window –

mourning doves

Hate Has No Home Here

by Shooooz

Listen, when I point out
The scent of fresh-baked revisionism
Lingering in the air
While the woman in the window
With the perfect beachy hair
Bends over the oven and
She has no face
Just a thin, wide-spaced font
Across her front
Typeset in too many tongues to count

Lonely Pantoum

When I see an animal alone in the biggest field
I wonder if they are lonely or if I’m projecting.
Every night this winter a parade
of brake lights, the backstory.

Apricot Jam

by Erin Hyatt

Here, it is always 1985.
There is spoiled chicken
salad on the patio furniture;
there are apricots
rotting on the ground.
I sink my teeth into July,
and boil orange fruit to the bone
on a gasoline fire that stinks
like rust. Just down the road,
an old tractor hums back to life.