fine poetry to turn your world around
Numerology by Annamaria Formichella The word “quarantine” comes from Italian, quaranta giorni— forty days or the length of time a ship was held in isolation when suspected of carrying the plague. First spoken in fourteenth-century Venice and revisited six hundred plus years later. In 2020 quarantine and lent are coterminous, contemp- oraneous, collapsing and conflated. […]
Reverse Ghazal by Alison Stone (for B.) Secrets that lips hold back, the body shows. Be gone, Sun. In moonlight, the body glows. Rittenhouse sobs he shot in self-defense. Entry wound in the back, the body knows otherwise. The heart houses love, pumps blood. Is illness chance or debt the body owes? Top model insists […]
The Rio Grande Café by Carol Deering See the taco lady her ruby slippers hanging out one side of a papier-mâché taco, her arm bent over her eyes. She’s resting while the jukebox slides another oldie and the toy train roars around again. Each flash of light as the doors swing open, she’s off in […]
Elegy for the Magi Trees by Gloria Heffernan I called them the Magi Trees since the first time I saw them. Three giant Norway Spruce just behind the rise of the drumlin beyond our backyard. Regal trees bearing wisdom and gifts. always on the verge of scaling that small hill, always on the brink of […]
