Every Midnight There’s a Hunger

by Susan Elbe

Kneeling on a porch in Massachusetts, a woman
opens up a burlap bag of freshly spaded beets,
and opens too a fist of rain, musky earth, losses
never mourned—two husbands, …

The Short History of Sexting

by Elizabeth Powell

I’m totally not sure how Johnny wound up in jail and on the sex offender website,
Or how we wound up on probation and detention and on the front page

His Two Arms

by Diane Lockward

dangle,
one on each side of his body
as he stands before the refrigerator,
leans in, and pillages for food—
purple grapes, a hunk
of Swiss, Kalamata olives—
his forearms …

Background

by Justin Jannise

You think you know
your background,
but it’s tricky.
A roomful of English teachers
calls biology your specialty.
Where scientists admire
those years you gave to Latin,
your classics major …

Joplin, July 2011

by Helen Townsend

You have to understand
that the streetlights are all new,
attached to bark-stripped timber poles
naked as these tenacious trees
that held on tight to Missouri clay
while the wind …

Boys Playing Army
In a Deserted Nursery

by Ralph Sneeden

          for Dave Smith

We taunted the ram in his paddock; he butted us back
to the bleached tinder of last year’s rye
where we flicked matches, …

Night

by Randy Cauthen

the old woman
rocks that boy
just as she had
his father before him
rocks him while he’s crying
his arm round her neck
eyes clenched but
loose enough
to …

Nest

by Cynthia Atkins

Because there is a phone booth
in St. Paul, where I want to be kissed
swift as a stolen car going nautical
in the rain. Jinxed and put on love’s

On This Street

by Susan Elbe

rain is wetter, colder,
alley cats are hungrier, each day
breaking open like a crow-barred lock,
the sky a grainy screen, the windy corners,

and each night,
heavy husbands shut out …

Wet Origami

by Marc Malandra

In honor of Akira Yoshizawa

 

Precision, order, diamond creases
no staircase out of poverty

no airs: visionary, patient, art expects
nothing in return

formulae to map root
papyrus, our first unfolding

to throw it all …

’Tis the End of the Year, Lend Us Your Ear

Zócalo Advances Its Mission In Rhyming Tradition

by Sarah Rothbard

If we do something twice, is it a Los Angeles tradition?
For the second year in a row, we’ve decided to commission
A poem to commemorate and celebrate 12 months …

Bilateral Bleed

by Debra Esarey

cerebral aneurysm, coma, spinal
meningitis, cardiac arrest, amnesia,
hydrocephalus, paralysis, permanent
brain damage

My mistake was interrupting
his death with a white light
I didn’t fully comprehend.

I thought I was helping.