From Austen Lee:

Seal yourself
in the cooler.
Pluck stamens till
your palms stain orange,
become the texture
of wax.

Rehearse your lines
like a prayer:

take care.
take care.
take care.

– Customer Service Voice, from poetry is dead‘s issue 19: drama

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From Ann-Bernice Thomas

maybe,
you begged his forgiveness after you devoured his mercy,
maybe,
praying stains.

maybe,
praying strays.

maybe,
poetry is biblical,
in the misuse of its remains.

– on theatre and poetry, from poetry is dead‘s issue 19: drama

From Mary O’Donnell:

Mary McCabe, of Derrynashallog,
who cared for her husband’s mother in dotage,
fed ten children,
the youngest still at the breast during hay-making.

Mary Conlon, Tullyree,
who wrote poems at night.

Assumpta Meehan, Tonygarvey,
saw many visions and was committed to the asylum.

Martha McGinn, of Emy,
who swam Cornamunden Lough in one hour and a quarter.

– Unlegendary Heroes

From Natalie Eilbert:

It is okay to bear. My apartment hums in a Rilke sense.
A pain blooms. I am told that it’s okay to forego details
of what happened. I am told it doesn’t matter now.
I want to write sentences for days. I want days to not
be a sentence. We put men in boxes and sail them away.
Justice gave me an amber necklace. I tried to swallow
as many as I could.

– Let Everything Happen to You

From Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon:

pretty’s just armor
something else

to wear like a dress or a name
not magic like skin

apparel apparent apparently
repellant pretty
don’t draw

flies like
honey we just pretend

it does

– Challenger

From Agha Shahid Ali:

A hurricane is born when the wings flutter …
Where will the butterfly, on my wrist, land?

You made me wait for one who wasn’t even there
though summer had finished in that tourist land.

Do the blind hold temples close to their eyes
when we steal their gods for our atheist land?

Abandoned bride, Night throws down her jewels
so Rome—on our descent—is an amethyst land.

– Land

From Catherine Staples:

As in green, vert, a royal demesne
stocked with deer. Invert as in tipped
as a snow globe, going nowhere in circles
but not lost, not bereft as the wood
without deer, waiting for the white antlered
buck, or his does, or any slim yearling
to step along the berm, return.

– Vert