- Overblown Roses
“to show me how the world began / and ended in perfection.” | by Mimi Khalvati
- Saints
“They shrug their bodies off and waft with clouds of celestial perfume.” | by Amy Gerstler
- from “Poems para Papa”
“He was sparse in his words / And generous in his loves” | by Marjorie Agosin
- My Gold-Toothed One
“Come, my darling, come with me:” | by Orphan Veli
- Vernal House
“All the little cries of light / glisten like icons in the darkest valleys” | by Maurya Simon
- Crickets Chirring
“to make the journey darker,/some watch cigarette smoke worm/its way toward the sublime.” | by Lance Larsen
- ALFREDO GERMONT EATS A GRANOLA BAR
“to savor the small treat hidden…//by the distance imposed on us” | by Suzanne Cleary
- Crow
“for how you outlived the awful wait/that fear can make of longing…//….we find bright ways to survive.” | by Geffrey Davis
- Citizenship
A ghost is not one who cannot let go but one who we cannot let go of…//Now I am neither one thing nor another” | by Kazim Ali
- Cathedral
“Who was I when I came here before./What were all the reasons I found all this…” | by Kazim Ali
- Icarus Turns Fifty
“For us there’s no epic end, no begging the king of the underworld/to return the lost son, no father casting himself grief-stricken into the sea.” | by Kazim Ali
- To My Son Who Gave Me Light Blue Beads
“But it seems to me, I can still please/A nineteen-year-old boy, like you,/Like this, the way I wear these beads” | by Celia Dropkin
- For My Daughter
“For you, Miao Miao, my daughter,/a sign of the cross.” | by Liao Yiwu
- Uncle Jim
“His feet leapt inches from God-given ground./His smile was toothy, laugh snapped toothy joy./His head—his heart—his head was tightly wound:” | by Ben Riggs
- My Mother’s Memory
“We live on separate planets now,/And she mulls and mulls,/Wanting to join me in my world,/Where sometimes I’m a son, sometimes not,” | by C.G. Hanzlicek
- Mama’s Work
“Her work/in the quiet corners of barns on the hay, on hot days/when locusts launch themselves out of thickets.” | by Santee Frazier
- Hello Brother
“Sometimes in these Bengali summers/When dust sticks to our skins/And the crows shit on our heads/We bond like hydrocarbons,” | by Zubair Ahmed
- It Was the Coffee in the Mornings
“the smell somehow staying with me//well beyond his walking into the living room naked” | by Allen Shadow
- Litany for My Mother’s Body
“We sew my mother’s body into the blanket. I make stitches. My sister makes stitches. My brother’s wife, my half sister. Other women.” | by Goldberry Long
- James Baldwin is Dead
“What death desires most/is the body that it had to endure/James Baldwin’s body/is qualified” | by Zang Di
- Discussing Death with Death Row Inmates
“And we, born from the vagina/understand what pain is./What is pain?/Even the bad guys have mothers.” | by Liao Yiwu
- To Gaze is a Ghost
“in a nest in the middle branch/of the pine sleeps. We find peace.” | by Steve Scafidi
- Oregon Elegy
“for language swaying with the branches,/soon picked to silence by crows—” | by Christian Campbell
- God’s Insomniacs
“One of the saints dipped her forehead/Into a candle, another tasted the flame.” | by Edward Hirsch
- Without Her
“her fine long tail waving a thin farewell/as both flew away from my life.” | by Katharyn Howd Machan
- Back When Water Was an Element
“since we couldn’t just walk across a lake,/the bed of it cracked now, bed of it dust,//dance partner of the wind” | by Rob Carney
- Early Morning Rain
“The dragonfly tilted its wings, curved its tail, / Your fingers as thin as a pier’s posts.” | by Nguyễn Quyén
- My Story
“if flowers fruit / there will be seeds of pure tears.” | by Ý Nhi
- Mama Ana Paula Also Writes Poetry
“I looked at her / back, strong like hairy bear that kills / a bull even when she’s drunk, and I understood:” | by Hu Xudong
- Les Negres de Paris
“…Every back, / it seems, is a blood neighbor” | Kwame Dawes
- The Lesser Gods
“But what about all the modest / neglected deities–the overlooked” | by Ellen Bass
- Girl on a Liner
“I’m standing/on the edge of nothing, with a handkerchief,” | by Emily Berry
- A Hint
“high into the air— / a song to slice the sky open, so he sang” | by Michael Trocchia
- On the Streets of Hanoi
“and the outsized appetites/I am shedding bit by bit” | by Katherine Towler
- Petri Dish
“The dish confines, / efficiently clasps without limbs.” | by Laura Hogan
- Light
“I have apprenticed myself to light,/to the way it moves through the world” | by Emily Portillo
- The Duck Pond
“The pond rises and sways, wind-rippled/a gelatinous mirror ball waiting to fall” | by Daniel Zeiders
- Sunporch
“Our house was a seabed of alien vines/reaching to touch the windowsills.” | by Emily Leithauser
- The Daughter
“Yet, to love her this way is to love the blue of distances” | by Jody Rambo
- Listening to Michael Jackson in a Closet
“my son/can recognize Michael’s voice/anywhere” | by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach