“Though they became by vows one flesh / he felt himself a little less”
Slant Rhyme
“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”
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Translation by Robert Mezey and Richard Barnes
“If sleep is truce, as it is sometimes said”
TONY BARNESTONE
“A man swings through the open doors on crutches, / his long arms thick with muscle like the Christ”
MICHAEL BATTRAM
“More heifer than a deer, a craftsman’s failure”
