A Basin

By A. K. Kiik

The bees are washing themselves in honey
All night I listened through a cloth sack
A song of sour bread dunked into wine
Dark handful of grapes heavy a breast sweeter
Than ripe carried like a black sugar to the mouth

Mugabe Rejects Charges that Detainees Are Tortured

By Jonathan May

The government thought we were terrorists
because we looked at a house. White people
would never live in such a house, they thought.

My parents were held for hours, questions,
questions, questions.

Math Girls of 8th Grade

By Karen Vande Bossche

Through the window I saw
you this morning talking,
counseling, I guess you could say,
those girls who draw blousy flowers
on the board in your classroom

The Romantic

By Chet Corey

A man says he carries letters
in Portland, Oregon.

Not that he is a letter carrier
or mailman,

but that he is “a man who carries
letters.”

Strange Blue Moon

By Laura Madeline Wiseman

Long ago we quit offering our tails
like the others—prairie chicken, peacock—
though we gasp when they tremble
to beckon a mate. Even the wild turkey
that once climbed our neighbor’s roof

Atlantis Sabotaged

By Nina Bennett

You sat at your computer, watched me
play with our granddaughter,
listened to us invent a world
of mermaids and magic wands
where dreams bloom large as sunflowers.

[mother in 64]

By Adam Walsh

sticks rubbery thin
the kind my mother called a switch
broke skin on her legs
since father caught her in mud
with white church shoes

Martha Jane Canary Tries AA

By Sara Clancy

She’s back to the bottle again,
after an early fever that gambled
away its taint on a sucker’s bet
that the bulldog at her throat
could be traded for a nice coffee