Set the Garden on Fire
By Chen ChenMy friend’s new neighbors in the suburbs
are planting a neat row of roses
between her house & theirs.
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Chen ChenMy friend’s new neighbors in the suburbs
are planting a neat row of roses
between her house & theirs.
By Hermine PinsonMother
Slipper
July
“ I will ask you to recall these words
at the end of our session”
By Maya PindyckMy friend tells me she just saw October Baby,
a movie about a woman who finds out she was
almost aborted—“abortion survivor,” she calls herself.
I ask my friend if she’s seen the newest flick,
By Tara Shea BurkeWhen we met we fell for each other like leaves.
Behind black curtains your bedroom was always dark
except for unexpected soft-yellow walls. Your dogs
By Lisa Suhair Majajbecause wind soughs in the branches of trees
like blood sighing through veins
because in each country there are songs
By Khaled MattawaNow that we have come out of hiding,
Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls?
And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
By Anne Waldmanthe aquarium deserted now,
this is the song at dusk I write in the notebook:
strange skin
By Saul LandauThe Cold War is over
why aren't we having fun
I have destroyed my internal Timex
By Jennifer PerrineUnder the surface of this winter lake,
I can still hear him say you're on thin ice
now, my heel grabbed, dragged into the opaque