“Prescribe yourself your favorite medicine, / go home and go to bed for like a week.”
True Rhyme
“You’ll think yourself a marble bust. You’re slate, / And every creep and critic is a sponge”
“We watched the colors break and spread / At what would be our passion’s peak”
“The years have done their thieving, / No time can be retrieved.”
“The harlequins should tumble, for your death / will not defy the odds”
“Time will not fill my teacup, will not come / To me with cucumbers in early spring.”
ERNEST HILBERT
“The wind’s so hard the timber groans. / Bright newborn blossoms blow like snow.”
ISABEL VANDER BLEEK
“I gave up alcohol for Lent / And took up cigarettes. / My choice was met with loud dissent, / In vaguely loving threats.”
E. M. KOMISAR
“She found her faith in static broadcast stations, / The grainiest and blurriest were best”
SCOTT RAY
“We smelled the smoke before we saw the fire”
JOHN POCH
“Don’t touch it yet. The gun is not a toy. / This isn’t home, or church, or work, or school”
PEDRO POITEVIN
“I will remain here on the sidelines where / each Saturday I witness my son glide / over slide tackles with a cocky stride .”
MICHAEL BROWN
“Like Job, he kneels, hands placed before him on the ground”
QUINCY R. LEHR
“Up late. The wife asleep, the laptop screen / a nightlight of sorts, I semi-surf the web— / a Twitter deep dive—another angry teen / was shocked by murder into eloquence.”
JEAN L. KREILING
“The palette loses warmth: the hair gone gray, / the teeth not quite so white”
MARYANN CORBETT
“Perfect: the singers, strings, and keyboards. Perfect // Bruised sky above the tents of the squatters’ district”
LISA BARNETT
“Propagate and fornicate, / procreate and copulate: / Latin for our base desires.”
CYNTHIA ERLANDSON
“My last red rose-of-sharon / Is slowly curling closed”
