fine poetry to turn your world around
Glosa: On Seeing Your Poem Beside the Words of Others by Cathy Thwing I stay quiet until the sun flattens on the landscape, and the map of the day unfolds its long dream of innocence. — ELEGY BY MARTIN WILLITTS JR. (from Gyroscope, Spring 2022) “Who will read?” Five hands shoot up. Not yours. Decades […]
My Mother’s Superstitions (Bleigiessen) by Claudia Reder We were educated and superstitious, adoring black cats, uneasy about walking under ladders, yet climbing the rickety flight of steps to hear our tea leaves read. On New Year’s Eve platters adorned with marzipan pigs and Linzer torte, we’d spoon small amounts of melted lead into a bowl […]
The Boat-maker’s Art by Shaheen Dil I. I watched the boat as it was built— the shine of wood, the decadent lines of it, hand-polished surfaces gleaming, sleek, tempting, half-done and up on trestles, looking for all the world as if it wanted to leap into the water, sails unfurled, bow springing above the waves, […]
Under a White Moon by Annette Sisson A daughter, now eighty-two, spends a decade grubbing in dirt, unburying the transplanted roots of her life. She returns to this place, searches for roses— Granada War Relocation Center, rocky, once covered with chain-link, barbed wire, seven thousand Japanese-Americans fenced away like nightshade. After Pearl Harbor, her mother […]
