Before Zeta, the seventh hurricane of the season, hits the city my neighbor who waves at mewho I wave back to finally speaks this neighborhood used to be filledwith teachers teachers every block he’s lived on that spot all his lifewas on that roof for two days during Katrina watched the house on this lotwhere our house is now fill up with water water to that stop sign there just down Cadillacright over there on St Bernard—he points east— the old folks and folks with disability we had to helppull them out it was sad it was real sad he hates the unruly Loblolly Pine in our yardspends hours raking…

When I return from visiting my newly widowed friend in Seattle, every wave swallowing the wet fringes of an empty beach mourns impermanence, how our nourishment depends on stealing others’ lives. Now they’ve documented the secret language of mushrooms under purple leaf litter, proved that even carrots, thistle are sentient, I don’t know what I can ingest without shuttering some voice whispering poems to the soil. At a street market in Japan, my arms winged a dialect of cranes & cuttlefish to bargain for an apricot & celadon vintage kimono, its flowering fabric scented with the history of someone else’s life. I’ve stopped complaining about my husband’s whistled snores on…

Taking Off the Bandages After the Mastectomy The Jackson-Pratt drainhas thin, rubber tubingand a soft, round squeeze ballthat looks like a grenade. Bless the heart of my surgical nurse,who wrapped me in yardsand yards of gauze and tapeafter the surgeon did his deed. I do not bleed, just ooze,and all the drugshave not worn off yet,so the unwrapping feels like it’s happeningto someone else. It’s not the first time, so I know the pain will come—sharp, bright and other-worldly. For now, I just see stitches,like bird tracks in snow,like words penned by someonewho wants to survive. Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired…

Better When Broken— Empty, open—sharp new edgesCatching the light. More lovelyWhen over, nearly forgotten:Gorgeous on the point of almostGoing out of sight. Better whenWounded, softened by deep wrong—Brackish water—ruined, floodedBy grief; braver moving slowlyForward, holding this moment’sSmall wavering flame—at lastPast furious (No!) disbelief. BetterConfessing loss on the way, late,To gratitude: repeating, Once, once…Best when? Now? Or never. Blessed. Baton Rouge, Ash Wednesday Shimmer of bead-strewn asphalt, the gutters glitter and shine: Pale styrofoam containers smashed open, ooze of red sauce, Greasy bones, splatter of mystery side-dish, sparkle of plastic and Shattered glass. Bright yellow banner of police tape, breeze-tugged, Fluttering. All the infinitely desirable throws are nothing now: muddy Plush…

The Loop (MMORPG) On the last leg of the loop I drive before sundown there is a back road through a tunnel of trees where canopies reach across & the intertwining limbs cast shadows like refracted sunlight in an asphalt pool. Who wants to see anything lovely by themselves? The way a timid moon enrages the blue emptiness of late afternoon, how a length of fenceless pasture turns my truck into one part in this moving diorama or massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Round bales of hay down a field with horses fucking. We’re all driving out here somewhere. It’s not how the heart gets back up but how many…

Independence Day Hugging the Hudson’s edgeon the way to Cold Spring Harbor,in the gray and lavender duskthe amphitheater a lit jewelat the Hudson’s throat.West Point on July 4th becausethe cadets would say “sir,” because once a boy at homelit firecrackers near us,called my angry father an ass.In the flanging dark my mother triedto pull my father off the boy,her slender silhouettelike a shadow puppet full of holes. West Point because they playedthe 1812 Overtureand my father liked cannons,the precision of their explosionsthe sulfured smoke blowing downthe river, dark on shadowed dark.When the fireworks were over,we leaned in the backseat like spent bowling pins.The stone pillars, granite wallsradiant in the sulphur-sparked…

temporal remains   trinkets. traffic. the endless blare of bachata. we walkthe city from one end to another. wherever we come our pale tongue betrays us for what we are: extranjerosthe kind that carries money like a foreign idol, the kind that breeds dreams only to steal them right back from you. the streets crumble under our feet, shed their history likea bad coat of paint. houses, structures, skeletons, it’s all temporal. roots, like the breaking of skin, take time andtime is that most feather-like of things: it flutters. so yes, if offered treasure, take feathers or cloth. anythingthat’s soft against your cheek, anything that rustles weathered, veinlike, brief. gold,…

To Richard Feynman, Concerning His QED   All we do is draw little arrows on a piece of paper—that’s all!—Feynman explaining how physicists calculate reflection It must have been goldto see you in the flesh—oh what profound and light amazement you could radiate. And when translating arrowsinto books, you sharpened the points, then aimedso you would pierce the dullest hearts and minds.Yet how could lines on paper showfull force of your delight? The core of your passion, now,has streaked on through and out to the other side—along with you. In spite of laurels,no spring could reverse your death, or this falling of love into symbols,this plummet of sun into wood.…

Leland Stanford Jr. It’s an old story: a boy had to die        before an institution could be madeto contain a father’s grief.        The child’s funeral masklike an early draft of humanity, discarded—                  white, even in death. Then: crude oil and cross-country railroads,        the children of California shall be our children,never mind who was already buried        in what is now a valley of kingmakers. Every Halloween, sophomores hold a party at the mausoleum. William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the chapbook…

Ode to a Bartender at the Charlotte Douglas Airport, Terminal A               I Her pink-accent shock-blond boband sad-face emoji tattoo softenthe sting of not asking for my ID,the before-noon margarita drinker in me. Her library copy of It atopthe Avantco refrigerator, a badlytattered Stephen King near hersweating, half-drunk strawberry lemonade from Burger Kingdistracts me from the intensifyingpro-Palestinian protests and arrestsat UCLA and Columbia on the TV, from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,from the failed cease fire and deadhostages. Today’s school shooting.I ask her what it’s like tending to us.               II She shares her customer journal, firleather record…