From William Evans:

I did wash the mud
from my fingernails before
I arrived—I’m still
laughing, by the way, still
hoarding my teeth deeper
within me, I am a [library]
full of the times I yanked
something apart and the times
I went hungry
and the times I let my hair grow
and grow and grow
until I was a snarl of a thing
and I ate everything
the party could offer me,
like I could never
become full.

– Social Experiment in Which I Am the [Bear]

From Asiya Wadud:

let’s celebrate our substance
subsistence in
amber rivulets of stilllife
constellations how you molded me
country how we became it
the longitude is a contested border
my longest muscle I named familiar

– attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]

From Claire Wahmanholm:

Instead, the poem is full of competent trees,
sturdy and slow-growing. The trees live on a wide
clean lawn full of adults. All night, the adults grow
older without somersaulting or spinning. They grow
old while thinking about themselves. They sleep well
and stay out late, their nerves coiled neatly inside
their grown bodies. They don’t think about children
because children were never there to begin with.

– Poem with No Children In It

From Dante Di Stefano:

hope—rain—change
begins when you hail
the sky sun & wind
the verdure inside
your heart’s four chambers
even garter snakes
and unnamed insects
in the underbrush
as you would a love
that rivers: hi—hi

– My Eighteen-Month-Old Daughter Talks to the Rain as the Amazon Burns

From Sarah Freligh:

Meanwhile the sun sets.
Meanwhile feral cats slink
from shadow to shadow
howling at your need.
Meanwhile, you grow paws,
claws, a tail. Wherever
you are, a coyote is watching
and waiting over and over
for you to lie down.

–Wild Me

From Sy Hoahwah:

In the eastern counties,
coffins raced uphill, moving on hay bales
and billiard balls.
Charon paid for everyone at the I-44 tollbooth.

On the North Canadian,
comforts of a widower’s loneliness
floated on pontoons.
Time balanced on a fish egg.

In the city, violins violated jackhammers.
At the refuge, night is the church for the disliked.

– Church for the Disliked

From C.D. Wright:

How summer’s children turn
into fish and rain softens men

How the elements of summer
nights bid us to get down with each other
on the unplaned floor

And this feels painfully beautiful
whether or not
it will change the world one drop

– Lake Echo, Dear

From Marissa Davis:

seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust

& my children & your children

& their children & the children

of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit

here not allied but the same perpetual breath

held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

– Singularity

From Elise Paschen:

A flare of russet,
green fronds, surprise
of flush against
the bare grey cypress
in winter woods.

Cardinal wild pine,
quill-leaf airplant
or dog-drink-water.
Spikes of bright bloom–
exotic plumage.

– Aerial, Wild Pine

From Gabrielle Calvocoressi:

the city will open its mouth and cry

out. Don’t worry ’bout nothing. Don’t mean
no thing. It will leave you stunned

as a fighter with his eyes swelled shut
who’s told he won the whole damn purse.

It will feel better than any floor
that’s risen up to meet you. It will rise

like Easter bread, golden and familiar
in your grandmother’s hands.

– At Last the New Arriving