November Constellations — 4 am Reflected through skylights — Jupiter in Orion.Neptune in Pisces. Pluto in Capricornus. I ignore the sign posted next to the defibrillator —No Lifeguard on Duty. Swim at Own Risk. (I’m not supposed to be here but I have a key.)Just this once, could I swim from one side of the Atlantic to the other? To kneel beneaththe pillars of my creation?                                    I know about their desperate escapes. From tsarist pogroms.The Nazis. In storms. Aboard the immigrant SS Presidente Wilson. SS Westernland.              …

December It has been December for monthsdark days and darker nightsan abyssal zone, no savior in sightno ox and ass snorting in a stableno wise men slogging from the eastworried about being latesneaking sips of strong drink to stay warmno crumbs of starlight in the skyshowing the wayas December’s teeth sink inbut over there under the olive treecan you see him? right there?a shepherd boy tending his sheepwearing a wool tunic tied with a ropeplaying his wooden flutefaint notes floating through the night Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review…

The Nameless Hours There’s a vortex of bees humming around my skull.Clock says I’ve only been sleeping a couple of hours.Something inside me falls off a shelf.I get up and take pills to quiet the hive,go into the kitchen and stare out the windowover the sink. Bats fly across the moon. Waitingfor the pills to kick in I watch the dim glow slideacross the leaves as the night rolls over in its sleep.The silence breaks into pieces I cannot hold.There are days ahead I know I’ll want to live throughbut not which ones or how far apart they’re going to be.It’s as much future as I’m willing to think aboutwhile…

On Sunday Everyone in Paramount Dreams the Same Dream:         After Mathias Svalina You are cruising the night down Somerset inside a Cheyenne,bajita como tus animos. Each time a corrido belico starts, youthrow your beer in the trucks bed, bump it, so loud the bass crushesverbs, scattering them along the streets. Then you notice anotherCheyenne, blindada, wax so bright contrabando reflects off thepaint. Los contrabandos follow you. You put the volume down.You intensify like the city’s drought. You make a right into theSans, thinking only the devil casts a shadow there at 3 AM. But thecontrabandos follow. You don’t know that’s their territory. Youdon’t know their presence…

Aside Myself My mind is not itself. Henri Cole During your heart attackI wore a mask in the waiting room watching as the capitol was breachedwhile they drew bloodand stuck terminals to your skin. They beat a cop with a flag andit wasn’t in the end a heart attack though the capitol fell and keptfalling and still falls. Now, I’m waiting in another hospitalreading an old New Yorkerreport on Iceland. So much lava and ruin and cortisol, butI’m no longer really reading. My eyes trace lines, words,letters until I’m only waiting,thinking of Cole’s line. Nor mine, I hear my voice answer.Nor even my voice. How little remains (I saysoftly to…

Living Kidney Vigil Instantly hypothermic the way peas frozenwith dry ice are or feet dipped into a winter lake,my son’s kidney looked exactly as I expected:chilled fist of preserved life, gobbed with yellow fat here and there, like something I’d pull from a hento replace with cubed bread stuffing and then bake.I hadn’t known the surgery would be streamedto our phones, that I’d see inside my child in a way that most surgeons usually did, but probably no parentever should. One year later this November, it’s a takethat still leaves me raw: two young men side by side,the organ transplant hush-slush machine a vat of salinated, silently held energy between…

When the Darkness Learned Our Names In this city, electricity moves like a passing ghost—brief, trembling, unable to anchor itself in our walls.When it appears,it startles the rooms into brightness,exposing everything we tried to hide:the unpaid bills,the sleepless nights,the faces we wear only in the dark. We scramble—charging phones, boiling water,capturing the momentas if light were a rare creaturewe might never see again. But the ghost tires easily.It slips away without apology,leaving the darkness to reclaim us,slow and certain,whispering our nameswith the confidence of somethingthat knows it will outlast us. Marvin Garbeh Davis Sr. is a Liberian writer and poet whose work explores the intersections of memory, survival, faith, and…

After the River We crossed where the bridge had fallen,Carrying what light we could.No one spoke of the missing,Only of rain,And how it washed the footprints clean.We saw dead birds flat on the river,Their wings branched, broken, burned.At dusk, the water glimmered,As if it had forgiven usFor surviving. Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian American poet, humanitarian, and historian. Her work explores themes of feminism, war, exile, refugees, and human rights. A Pushcart Prize winner, she has also been nominated for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, is a recipient of a United Nations humanitarian award, and has received grants from the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her books include…

A Bird is a Prayer Especially a bird in flight, especially a bird flying low over a green field of meadowgrass, or clover, or wheat. That lightness and speed, thatburst of wings, that blur lilting so fast you almost miss it, that’s theprayer. The bluebird or finch or, yes, even sparrow nearly weightlessbut weighted enough with some blood and a quick dark eye skims themind’s surface, troubles the morning, gray and soft with oncomingrain, soft enough to cradle the bad news each day brings. So it mattersthat the bluebirds today are tireless, methodical little machines feedingfive new prayers, just fledged, lined up and nearly hidden in the boughsof the pine.…

Tasting Room I ask for a bottle of balance. The girl behind the counter tongues a grape. Slides a glass across the counter. The men make their awkward charm at her, elbow me back behind the napkins. At thirty my youth has fermented. Cities oaked and barreled behind me. All year I’ve been saving up for this trip. Birds sleep, sweet in their excuses. The red barn fattens over the vineyard. Outside this tasting room, a woman with an easel paints what she sees. We inside become the black opening to a building. Our stories the opaque counterpoint to all that light setting the field aflame. Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry…