Picnic in Stone
by Beverly Burch: We stopped for lunch, a bare schoolyard, / a wooden table exposed to summer sun.
Poems
Sky/Branches/Sky
by Beverly Burch: On a low sloping hillside in early December— / where? Tennessee? New Jersey?—we lay back / after a long walk. You went on about something, / maybe politics—I’d stopped listening.
Good
by Ellery Akers: 1. When my mother fell face down onto her salad at the table, / or dug her carefully polished nails into my arm and said, “It’s all your fault,”
Untitled
by Ruth Stone: Now music irritates me. / I want nothing but sight. / I have never liked the dark,
Nice
by Barbara Crooker: after “La Promenade des Anglais à Nice,” Raoul Dufy / The row of palm trees curved along the Baie des Anges / like a strand of beads on the long white neck / of a beautiful woman, and the blue Mediterranean
In The Camargue
by Barbara Crooker: there are flamingoes everywhere—les roses flamants, literally, pink flames—
Prince Charming’s Confession
by Mark Brazaitis: I never thought my father would agree / to our marriage. She was, after all, / little more than a servant girl.
The Man Who Came Back
by Hoàng Hùng: He came back from that far country / to find his wife in tears all night and his children bewildered all day
Intermittent
by Yousif al-Saigh: Tonight / the nightmare was very condensed:
Nights in Panciu
by Radu Andriescu: On a collective farm in Panciu I climbed with a turkey hen / to the roof of the canteen
The Heavenly Poets
by Pablo Neruda: What have you done / you intellectualists? Rilkistas? / you fucked up mystifiers, fake witches?
The Tablets
by Nicanor Parra: I dreamed I was in a desert I was sick of myself
Said the Major
by Anna Swir: “This order must be delivered within an hour,” / said the major.
Beyond
by Camelia Leonte: He bears his vertebrae on his back. / I wonder what spiritual rage drives him,
Crying With Glasses On
by Eric McHenry: It’s such a grownup thing to do, / Like renting tap shoes to perform / for no one in an electrical storm. / What’s wrong with you?
Ars Domestica
By Dana Roeser: The key to this life is / surprise. Don’t say / my whole life is spent / trying to reunite / socks.
Three Poems
by Gary Young: In New Jersey, a couple pulled a man from his car, shot him, and locked him in a box to die.
Letter of Recommendation
by Elaine Equi: Please say something really good, / no, great about yourself. I would / but I am watching a porno movie / and have no time to write.
Trances
by Mary Crow: I. Automatic pilot: / I come to and wonder how I got / to Elizabeth Street, half way home.