Christian Wiman – Every Riven Thing

“God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made sing his being simply by being the thing it is”

Natalie Diaz – Of Course She Looked Back

“She meant to look away, but the sting in her eyes, the taste devouring her tongue, and the neighbors begging her name”

José Martí – Love in the City

“and Desire, on Fever’s arm,
beats the thicket, like the rich hunter.”

C Dale Young – Melancholia

“how one does this, mourn one’s self”

Miraji – Nonbeing

“Everywhere the burning footfalls of time are advancing one after the other”

Louise Glück – The Denial of Death

“I saw myself standing under the balcony in that rain of foil-covered kisses, unable to believe you would abandon me, begging you, of course, though not in words”

James Wright – A Blessing

“Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom”

Natalie Scenters-Zapico – Pledge Allegiance

“Friends, Americans, countrymen lend me your ears! But only the border agent replies, Do you know the pledge of allegiance?”

W.S. Merwin – October

“I will gather these pieces together,
Any minute now I will make a knife out of a cloud.”

Emily Jungmin Yoon – Decency

“Even years later I could not speak of men and their violence because I wanted to believe, yes,
in such a thing as decency in men I loved.”

Lucille Clifton – shadows

“meaning is the river of voices. meaning is the patience of the moon.”

Márton Kálasz – Legacy

“in the field we are walking
like yoked horses together forever.”