The Love Ridge Loop BY ABBIE KIEFER In disregard of the signs, no one bothers with leashes, dogs barreling unbounded over every grooved path. He’s friendly they yell, 50 yards back. Don’t worry, he’s darling, a cuddlepie of a pup. I’m never not wary. Show me any person who could call their dearest unworthy. Who would warn me Walk wide. He’s teeth and more teeth. This creature I love beyond my control.
Welcome to Indian Country BY RENA PRIEST Where is Indian Country? It’s everywhere we stand. It’s anywhere we dance. It’s where the earth loves the feel of our feet. Welcome to Indian Country. What does that mean? It means this is where we lift our voice in song and make a joyful drumbeat so our hearts can sing along. Welcome to Indian Country. This beloved country here, where we honor our ancestors by growing stronger every year, by making laughter the answer that wipes away our tears. Welcome to Indian Country. What does the future hold? In uncertain times like these we [...]
Invitation BY MARK KIRSCHEN Come out into the open where We all are: at the center of a bridge Whose dark river draws all light And the nearest weeds to itself Here to search out love— Discarded hearts at the city's edge— Where fish follow their fathers' routes And we cannot lift up to thread the constellations If you meet me here I will make you a myth: you will show As cold points between the clouds If you meet me here your light Will hold the eyes of descendants Unable to find a crossing over the dark river
Such Beauty from Ashes BY CAROLYN MARIE RODGERS and we are singing our hearts out, and our souls are in our eyes, and they are beautiful souls. they are souls of truth. they are souls of love. they are souls of faith. they are souls of hope. and we have conquered a little corner in the world of fear. and we have stepped up and forward, and we have torn down walls. we have smashed sound barriers between us. we have dared again and again and yet again to dream, and our dreams have finally taken material form. we have [...]
Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise BY JAY HOPLER Now that the sun has set and the rain has abated, And every porch light in the neighborhood is lit, Maybe we can invent something; I'd like a new Way of experiencing the world, a way of taking Into myself the single light shining at the center Of all things without losing the dense, eccentric Planets orbiting around it. What you'd like is a more Attentive lover, I suppose—· Too bad that slow, Wet scorch of orange blossoms floating towards The storm drain is not a vein of stars . . . [...]
Wondrous by Sarah Freligh I’m driving home from school when the radio talk turns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exit the here and now of the freeway at rush hour, travel back into the past, where my mother is reading to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math, how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief multiplies the one preceding it, how the [...]
First Memory Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was-- for what I was: from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved. Louise Gluck
Love After Love by Derek Wolcott The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome,and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on [...]
Wherever My Dead Go When I'm Not Remembering Them By Alan Shapiro Not gone, not here, a fern trace in the stone of living tissue it can quicken from; or the dried–upchannel and the absent current; or maybe it's like a subway passenger on a platform in a dim lit station late at night between trains, after the trains have stopped— ahead only the faintest rumbling of the last one disappearing, and behind the dark you're looking down for any hint of light—where is it? why won't it come? You wandering now along the yellow line, restless, not knowing who you are, [...]
State Fair Fireworks, Labor Day BY MARYANN CORBETT Look up: blazing chrysanthemums in rose shriek into bloom above the Tilt-a-Whirls, hang for a blink, then die in smoky swirls. They scream revolt at what the body knows: all revels end. We clap and sigh. Then, no— another rose! another peony! break, flame, roar, as though by roaring they might make the rides whirl in perpetuum. As though we need not finally, wearily turn, to plow back through the crush of bodies, the lank air, to buses that inch us, sweating, across town. As though we were not dropped in silence there to [...]
