Stephanie Burt – After Callimachus

“I felt like a constellation, some new fixture in the sky”

Percy Shelley – Queen Mab (excerpt)

“War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade”

Tanaya Winder – Becoming a Ghost

“His shadow chased him
from corner store to church
where he offered himself in pieces”

William Reichard – In the Evening

“Tonight, I’ll sleep
blanketed in moonlight.”

Margaret Atwood – The Moment

“We never belonged to you.
You never found us. It was always the other way round”

Richard Blanco – Complaint of El Río Grande

“I was meant for all things to meet”

Paul Tran – The Cave

” As they followed the idea, light and language followed like two wolves”

Emily Dickinson – After great pain, a formal feeling comes

“This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived, as Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –”

Rena Priest – The Index

“you shall be granted passage. It was agreed. The meek shall stay, the powerful shall leave. And it all shall start again.”

Adrienne Rich – End of an Era

“poetry extends its unsought amnesty, autumn saws the great grove down”

Rowan Ricardo Phillips – History

“And nothing came to you because you were owed absolutely nothing. Not even the growing indifference in her voice”

Philip Metres – One Tree

“Always the same story: two people, one tree, not enough land or light or love”