Illustrating Emily

by Bryce Berkowitz

after Kim Addonizio

She hangs around, bestowing new doubt to your friends
or else she disappears over the long weekend.
She shows up again mid-week, when you’re finally sober,

like someone passing through town who just invited you to dinner.
She allows you to search, then provides variant meanings.
When you lie in bed Continue reading

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The Makings of a Love Poem

by Zachary Payne

My wife is from Spain. When we met, we spoke to each other in Spanish, still today it is what we use to communicate. Is love bigger than languages? All I know is that it is impossible to express my affection for her in anything other than Spanish. Continue reading

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Retrieving My Father’s Ashes on My Birthday

by David P. Miller

It took fewer days for him
to carry me home, lay me in the crib
than for me to carry him home,
place him on a bedroom closet shelf
among the bare clothes hangers. Continue reading

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True Story

by Kay Cosgrove & Lauren Hilger

Now, when I read this, a cloud covers
a marble lobby deep in sick July,
changing my face with grief.

I have been here before,
at least every summer since, hot air,
a hug behind a locked hotel room door— Continue reading

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Just the Facts

by Vivian Lawry

I was my younger sister’s maid of honor when she married her high school sweetheart a year after graduation, and fifty years later I was her matron of honor when she married him again—and I hope to tell you that finding an appropriate outfit for a sixty-something matron of honor was no easy task— Continue reading

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