“Gulls kettle in the steam /rising from what, / from meters up, must seem / like tea bags but / for the smell”
Slant Rhyme
“No chance your mortal bride can thrill you as I do. / Awe-slapped, your lips hung loose at your first sight of me.”
“High-cheeked, dark-haired, toned like prehistory / put him to work”
“Though they became by vows one flesh / he felt himself a little less”
“My father sent my mother a photograph from boot camp— / tucked in a corner of her mirror when she put on lipstick”
“Prescribe yourself your favorite medicine, / go home and go to bed for like a week.”
“Somebody built a god near seventh street / beside the freeway in a vacant lot”
SPENCER HUPP
“Hedge of high sumac that fences the yard / May you be fetid by spring from poor keeping”
SALLY THOMAS
“All day the oak came down. The bright air glinted / With fine red sawdust as with locust wings.”
PETER SWANSON
“Think thin, America, in silhouettes / Of evening dress and city lines.”
MORI CREECH
“I struck the match. My child watched dead leaves burn”
AMIT MAJMUDAR
“Solitudes crowded past at every floor / And filled the lift beginning at the back.”
BRUCE BOND
“In this dream he is the deep-sea diver”
SANDRA SHAFFER VANDOREN
“Motionless as herons, snipers stare, / their long, slick beaks of guns all pointing down”
JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI FERENCEI
“Among our trees the devilish gypsy moth / scatters still-green leaves like scraps of cloth”
ELIZABETH KLISE VON ZERNECK
“In this dark cabinet of poem: / no lanterns rise, few men reach home.”
ROBERT DONOHUE
“In lonely moments it may come to mind / To brush away the cobweb’s veil”
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Translation by Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes
“Snow fallen on Northumberland has known / And forgotten every footprint that you made”
