I hardly dared open my mouth, even to say something innocuous like “Sure, I’m hungry. I could eat dinner.” My words might be analyzed to reveal something knotty, something sinister I didn’t know I felt but really ought to know I felt.
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The Elephant by Riley Kross
My wife kept to her alcove. I kept to my nook. The elephant played between us.
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Joy and Pain, Sunshine and Rain: On Teaching/Reading Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Even when his poems take a darker turn, such as recalling the murder of a friend and colleague, or the bittersweet memory of a childhood crush who has since passed away—there are moments of true grace within these elegies—a slowing down, not in pacing but in memory’s leaps.
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Selenium Sulfide by SJ Sindu
I’m here tonight because a week ago I woke up and discovered that my inner thighs had started turning white. Not chalk-white. White-girl white.
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The End of Coney Island Avenue by Roohi Choudhry
In this country, a man could be lost and no one would know enough to grieve, not even his own mother.
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Float by Marcia Aldrich
I hardly dared open my mouth, even to say something innocuous like “Sure, I’m hungry. I could eat dinner.” My words might be analyzed to reveal something knotty, something sinister I didn’t know I felt but really ought to know I felt.
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This is a Parable by Isabel Quintero
“Your mother is afraid of lizards. This is a constant. In the present or the past, she is always afraid of lizards. When you were a child, one crept in the house when your father was out, probably getting high––though you cannot blame everything on addiction. He might have been working.”
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Tractor Town by SJ Sindu
My cousin is late. And handsome. And very late. And, technically, not my cousin. But sex would be complicated, and he’s probably a virgin, and his English is not so good, so I let it go.
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Hema and Kathy by Anita Felicelli
“Hema immediately wanted to please him. Theo was black-haired, handsome in a vulpine way, stocky and muscular, yet agile, and a little older than Kai. He was French, and played professionally in London for ten years before coming to the United States. He’d played for France’s soccer team in 1998 when they won the World Cup. He wanted the girls he coached—girls like Hema—to be tough and fierce, to be consummate sportswomen.”
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My Country 'Tis: Listening to Ishmael Read by Ru Freeman
this King & Kennedy country
that fast draws
that kills slow
My Country 'Tis: Learning Their Letters by Ru Freeman
the justifiable fears
of waking from an American fantasy of arrival
in places that require defense, let him go.
A Woman Without Origin by Elaine Hsieh Chou
The woman went abroad and began to lose her grip on things.
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Lodestone and Weathervane by Jae Towle
“One never changes the past, Roshelle says. Fundamental misunderstanding. Each incarnation of reality must be internally consistent—that is, if one goes backward in time, it’s not a disruption of the plan; it’s what always happened.”
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My Country 'Tis: Love, Philadelphia by Ru Freeman
Rocky is a myth in the air between
us untrue things this American
dream
Limes by Alexander Lumans
He sticks his hand in his pocket for a brush but pulls out melted gray taffy instead. He thinks, can only think, of that painted tree in the rain.
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Two Poems by Rita Mae Reese
I will give him this bird trapped in a doorway,
a mad heart in feathers and pulsing eyes.
Of Eagles, Goats, and Space Men by Patrick Madden
Which is to say that you can essay about anything, find some small hook in the overlooked or takenforgranted.
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Vertebrae by Jess Masterton
Her bones had been bleached, stripped of all muscles and tendons, and you called me to your side as though I were your own.
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The Madrid Conversations by Normando Hernàndez Gonzalez with Adam Braver and Molly Gessford, Translated By Cynthia Guardado
The simple act of having your rights to liberty and expression, I would say. The simple act of not being scared to say what you are thinking.
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Transmissions from the Baby Monitor by Sarah Gerkensmeyer
“You tell us death, and you tell us pain, and you tell us there are good things, too.”
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