Everyone was out that day, for a show. Sure, it was sad for people who knew him but she was his mother, slinking about the rabble in that dark halug, veiling her face with a headscarf—as if no one noticed her. Some say it served her right, letting her son run about the countryside the […]
Poetry 81
Ada Limón: The Story of the Pencil
He takes the pencil out of his shirt pocket and gives it to her. It turns into a dragonfly and then into her only reason to live. She is poor and carries the dragonfly-pencil in her apron and writes him notes all day on paper towels. In the night, when everyone else is sleeping, her […]
Jona Colson: Mother, Rest
I, too, felt anxious, and snared— so when I left the house I didn’t wave goodbye, didn’t look you in the eye. I knew I would not come back to that room, that sound of stars crashing against the window mesh, that color of loss sword-flashing silver in the dark hall. I couldn’t take you […]
Jene Beardsley: Sniper
The shots come from somewhere overhead– Small-caliber raindrops That pick off one by one the yellow leaves Crowding the black maple.