Home Repair I just really love when the air conditioning stops working,or when a pipe has a visible leak somewhere magical and obviousthat doesn’t require holes in drywall or fumbling in attics.Give me a problem that’s fixable, but not by me. I know what to do: I will call a company who responds in their own time,who sends out a man more competent than the ones I know,who could also totally be scheming me, I know. He disappears for a few minutes or hours into parts of my housethat I never go to, emerges satisfied with himself, smart enough to tell meexactly what’s wrong while simultaneously making no sense whatsoever…

Blessing As I leave the supermarket, a womancarrying yellow chrysanthemumsputs her cart away and waves to me. I don’t know herbut I wave back and we both smile.She has mistaken me for someone else, turned us into old friends.October sunshine falls like a blessingon her baseball cap and my windbreaker. A & P Aubade I found my virginitythe other day, lostfor almost fifty years. It was tucked insidea yellowed newspaperfrom August 9, 1974. The front-page headline:NIXON RESIGNS!The night he gave up the presidency I gave up something I was gladto be rid of—that longing,that loneliness like dusk on the sluggish gray riverI could see from my third-floorone-bedroom apartment. Next morning,…

With the Moon On Their Wings The ibises are here.A 100-bird earthworm-excavation crew.When you have that beak, everything looks like a beach.Homeowners stand on ruffled squares of green. The ibises are gone.Except for this one, pecking aimlessly.Going through the motions of ibisness while panicking inside.They have left me behind. In a fairy tale, he’d be magical.Villagers would flock from near and far to hearhis croaky oracles. But it’s 2024, and the world is nothingif not disenchanted. He’s approaching some crows.Imagine if they take him to their nightly roost.Thousands of birds coming together in the darkening sky,one a little different to the eye.       Claire Jean Kim is on…

Turning Stones I remember the flavor of absence, the wayhe reached for my lips, tried to taste our blood.And when the owl looked back & flew to darkness,a train lifted tracks out of our lost town.He asked why my heart is a cadaver,then offered an avocado pit, cleaned,which I buried underfoot, & while it rooted,bearing fruit in some life I haven’t known,I’ve forgotten which foot ferries the seed. A Dream I walked along a wildwood path,a persimmon glowed come hither& a small gray bird lit upon my armholding a branch that held a pear,the shape of an invitation. I’d never had a choice like this—something good or something gooder.My toes…

Sonnet for the Fall of an Empire Here in the land of bread, milk and honeywe wag our wine and vinegar tongueswhile everything gleams like looted copper,and landmines nap between slick rows of corn. Hungry children traipse over our corpsessinging only the most beautiful hymns,the gardens grief-tilled with bones of young mensprouting black blossoms to the bugle’s moans. The sun, too lazy to finish her arc,stumbles over jagged mountain crownstossing shadows into the wise mens’ beardsas they stumble drunk toward Bethlehem. We kneel to worship the pale-shadowed moonuntil ashes, ashes, we all fall down.   Colleen S. Harris is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose books of poetry include God…

Big idea I would have loved to have been bitten in the ass by fame.And money of course. I would have loved to maintainmy humble self, sprinkling a little of my wealth to others,would have maybe even bought you a Corvette. That big idea used to grip me as I sat aroundpoor and needy and ego famished.Now here I am, staring at this brush fireI built to clean up the yard, listening to the rain touching down. AndI think I might have right here perfect synergy,cold rain cooling the heat of the fire and the heatwarming my face back up, two sort-of-healthy kids, a beer under my beltand if you…

Memories My mom says everyone tells her she should be happyShe has her memories, but she says the past just makes herSad. At lunch we sit with a woman who says she can’tRemember anything. She says every minute is completelyNew. She has no idea what she just said so she’s afraidTo speak for fear she’ll repeat herself. She says she can’tRemember anyone’s names. I tell her I can’t rememberHer name. It feels liberating but rude to say this aloud.My mom shouts out the woman’s name to me. I tell my mom she needs to live in the moment, in the hereAnd now. I tell her to focus on the present…

Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire founded 1764 On mailboxes, the same names appear;in the town library a few new books nestleamong ancient volumes; shop proprietors abandoned their long beards, women theirfloor-length dresses. The white spires ofTown Hall and the Congregational church still rise over the green common where I readon monuments the names of the dead, the warsthey died in. Blue mountains stretch out behind the haze. I imagine the camps of the Pawtucketand the Massachusetts drowsing in fields of grasswhere now horses graze and dun-colored sheep bleat in meadows ringed with bloom: thistle,ox-eye daisy, fragrant spikenard. Pines on hillsrise high and narrow, red squirrels leap from one crowned summit to the…

Gravity Done sweeping leaves from shingles, his foot findsthe top rung of the ladder & it slides. He twists, falls headfirst from the roof’s lip, instinct stretching armsearthward in submission to the god that would reclaim him. One airy sip of amnesia & he feelsthe pain of his worship, tries to speak, dizziness & nausea squeezing the coil of his being. The grainy Zapruderof that slip replays in & out like bone smoke from a snuffed candle. Tendrils of youth rise & drift toward the strange—bellied Hotei laughing on his grandmother’s mantle. The odor of talc & wrinkles in his great aunt’s apartment.The wash of white clamshells closing from the…

Into the Pond I’ve waded into old age not thinkingI was towards the deep, butI’m drowning in loss as I watch a tiny girl launchinto the pond from high on the rocks,fearless, and fear is so much of it now, a misstepcould cause a fall, a break, and so I push neatly against the water. Some days,I think I’ll hurry to the drop off.                                                 So what if the best is yet to come?      I’m donewith all my running, Red Rover, I’mcareful, intolerable.       …