Letter to My Country Doctor Father

by Rebecca Norris Webb

You taught me to accept whatever came to the door: a bushel of corn, two porterhouse steaks, a bag of bittersweet horehound candy—your favorite—and the suffering that each of us …

I Feel Like a Fool Do You?

by Heid E. Erdrich

Preppy Haircut

by Aaron Belz

Anyway, my band Preppy Haircut.
Venue asked what time we could loden.
I said anytime but I prefer hunter.
Assuming we’re all wearing khakis.
They said no this is for …

Only child

by Camilo Velasco

The Andromeda Strain

by Matthew Minicucci

There’s nothing more American than blaming empty space for a giant virus of its own making. Curiosity killed the clotted doctor, and kindness the rest. Really, it’s always …

Vision

by Lorene Delany-Ullman

[Excerpt from The Grief Contest.]

 

Bone shade: the hip and pelvis
against dusk,

my arthritic spine, the blurring
lines between skeletal structures,

the invisible ray passes
through my soft tissue

the x-ray was an …

[men shouting]

by Connie Voisine

The hallways lead through the belly of
hospital, hotel, laundry service, nowhere.
These vague industrial spaces with safety doors

reading Alarm Will Sound if Opened
in this cement and cinderblock gullyway
lead me to …

MERCY

by Charles Jensen

The Dalmatian sank from me
when I set him on the grass,

pausing to kneel before his bones
crumpled away. I knew he was reaching

toward death. I wanted to …

Emergency / we could never stop

by K.A. Hays

“And yet many scientists still describe geoengineering as an inevitability—it’s just so cheap, they say … polluting the air on purpose to keep the planet cooler … and …

Raye Montague (1935-2018)

by Jessy Randall

Do the obituaries of great men
mention their hobbies?
Raye Montague played bridge.

If your obituary appears in the Times
and goes for six screens
maybe it’s okay to include
your …

Poem Without a Title

by Nathan Spoon

A figure sits quietly on the shadowed earth
underneath the spreading branches of
the tree of the mind. Through long night
an owl calls with spaced out singular
cries. It …

Blue Hour

by V. Penelope Pelizzon

The last late rain-scaled light has swum
along the office wall.
An aggrieved

mosquito-whine of all you’ve not achieved
needles. But your pen’s aphasic.
Each hypnotic tick

of keyboard pecked …