Gary Soto – Dog Years
Dog Years Clouds have stalled in the eyes Of an old dog. The purplish tongue drips. His hind legs are dead, I guess, because they’re up, Like landing gears, with small wheels Attached to his hind end. The dog sniffs the air, Then rolls toward a leaf Curled, crisp, hopelessly common. He stares me down, […]
Christopher Shipman – Fog of Tongues
Fog of Tongues Once upon a time words were beasts. They stalked the things they named until they became those things. Fog stumbled behind. We lived and died in the direction of words— a religion of everything unsaid. Not an image named. Only sun and shadow— that violent blur between moon waxing gibbous moon waning crescent. […]
Kathie Collins – Yadkin Valley
Yadkin Valley Shoulder-high clumps of spent grain bend low over the lush green that weaves itself through summer’s stiff leavings—every blade a child burst from its seed. How did they survive winter unbroken, only bowing their heads under the weight of the snow? A bluebird lights on feathered tassel, surveys woods and field for a […]
Julia B. Levine – On the Vireo Nest Atop Your Wire Brush
On the Vireo Nest Atop Your Wire Brush When you find it between boxes on a shelf beside the house, woven with hair and shoelace and twigs, I am in the garden, watering lettuce we planted in August, green spears of romaine translucent in November’s side-lit sun. Wet, the soil smells like spring, like the […]
Joseph Hutchison – Mindfulness
Mindfulness The young buck lies down under my window in the shade of the deck above, the knobs on his budding antlers furred like kiwifruit. Now and then a ray of sun slips down between the deck boards, makes the fuzzy antler tips shimmer like that quick-wittedness the buck will need when others of my […]
