The World Below the Brine

by Walt Whitman

The world below the brine,
Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves,
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick tangle,
openings, and pink turf,

He Leaves Me

by Timothy Liu

out of breath in the same way

one sprints through a tunnel
trying to catch a train one knows

one’s going to miss, thinking:

was I trying to run away with him
or …

Casey at the Bat

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more …

Sonnet 143

by William Shakespeare

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather’d creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she …

I wish I were a killer whale

by Kevin Patrick Lee

Sure, you would have to look beyond my 5-ton physique,
understand that a washboard stomach is only a dream,
and that I will always be hairless.

I could no longer open …

The Ashcan School

by Charlie Scott

Normally the score gets settled. The earth,
after all is said and done, gets it right.
An arrow straight to the bull’s fired-up heart.
In fact, as we speak, things …

Is there a way to wake up?

​(Jena Osman)

by H. L. Hix

I was supposed to know them, the couple
you named, alerting me they’d gone missing.
(This dream dimmed what all my dreams dim: trouble.
We never bloomed, but we keep …

And the Darkness Comprehended It Not

by Greg Sellers

These luminescing stars, two lazy zodiacs
more than what actually exists in front of a
pair of carefully placed mirrors—the first, full-length,
the other, oval & moon-veiled
atop its dark …

There Was That

by George Yatchisin

This canal wasn’t grand but that
didn’t stop you from photographing it
for this was Venice, this was Italy,
Europe, your first time, your honeymoon,
a freight of meaningfulness, like …

Prairie Spring

by Willa Cather

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,

The Fountain of My Youth

by Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés

On the way to a new life in
la Florida
we made a stop in Saint Augustine
oldest city in our America
A side trip to visit la
Fortaleza de …

Ursa Major

by Laura Orem

Old she-bear, pent
in her rocky den,
gnaws a footpad
dry as dust,

solitary rakes in sticks
and scratches the scar
that marks a hunter’s
mis-aimed lead.

Shaking the ice
off her …