They Hear Him All of my relatives say they hear him:he is the knocking of the robin’s wingjust so against the window, the springtimebuzz of the electric saw, the riseof children’s laughter from the roundabout.Wonderful, I say, but I’m sour.He’s my father. He would not be wingor saw or child. He would not consentto changing his form thus. I am certain:he’s quiet. I never hear his low baritonechords. Not the rumble of a throat fullof sleep. Not the soft upward lilt whenhe says Jeanine. He’s gone. Or an awfultruth: he talks. He does not talk to me. Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me…

Moon Poem after Phoebe Bridgers “Moon Song” I am not a dog with a bird at your door. Really, I am the yellow bird in the mouth of a dog. I am the color of marigolds in August, and I am still alive, but I hold my breath. My feathers are almost as light as my bones, which are full of the same air as the sky. I can smell the dog breathing, his rotting back teeth pressing against my skin, not too deep yet. I am holding still, I am playing dead, I am thinking of eggs. My eggs back in the nest: freckled, the palest blue. I spent…

West 10th St, River of Evening: Chez Sardine  Blue chill in the air, lungs leaping, all the gleam of fresh nightfall funnelled into narrow streets. The illusion of homing in on it.  Have I dined here before? I confess I haven’t. I fiddle with chopsticks, air caught in my throat.  Dinner for one (wife out of town), the waiter’s nod and smile, an oversized match to a votive candle.  I can’t resist the maple-miso salmon head, chef’s special, left in the oven for hours, a mass of knotted connective  tissue slowly melted. Faced with the out-thrust jaw, I peel the skin’s thick char, a crunch of sugar and funk,  and scoop the cheek-flesh. I resort to hands, tug at underpinnings, loosen pockets of collagen.  A pile of thin…

Ithaka It took[1] seventeen-plus yearsto accept your invitation[2] I shouldn’t have been[3]surprised to learn that the train doesn’t stop there anymore[4]but, remarkably, an ancient white cat stared at me as Ipassed[5] and I thought of who I used to be and whatwe leave behind to become what we are no longer[6]and something in my solar plexus makes me —is that the inchoate heart?[7]—stand up and run [1]  and took and took from me [2]  the blue door opens onto light [3]  is what I thought the world was whispering [4]  where once were shops and gardens—remember the dandelion wine?the witch who gasped when you drewthe ten of swords? penitentiary-like tenements…

Dear April Dear rain like background music in a bad restaurantand dear flood of buds on the trees. Dear life in which I imaginemy belly as proof of the goodwill of the fates,dear the cost of embracing another side dish of a season,of meandering and waiting at each swollen stream—the debris carried so rapidly, the breathless mudbunched with ice at the side of the road.  I join the crowds outside the movies—movies where a singing and dancing coupleproclaim their true love, even when. Dear you of constant sorrow, clipping branches,stirring the clear water in a vase—dear grieving that is never quiet,dear you falling and studyingthe architecture of lost ground.If you face…

Looking down from the 16th Floor (Detroit, MI) at the casino parking lot,where five children frozeto death last week. The corner Sonoco–the flashing lights.The endless fracas. Commuters like scugsdashing up and downalong the bank. A Poleteam freighterfusedto the frozen river. In a not distantbuilding, smokebillows up. The Renaissance Centera demolition site.The new bridge a gangplank. Churchescombatting casinos;the congregationcutoff. When summer comes,the muscle cars willpanic the scooters again. So many passing. Kelly Fordon has published two award-winning short-story collections: I Have the Answer (2020) and Garden for the Blind (2015), and two poetry collections, What Trammels the Heart (2025) and Goodbye Toothless House (2019). Her work has appeared in The Kenyon…

Dog At times, I write from a list of wordsgleaned from poemsI point to at random. Clustersof nouns I gather to me—fruitwarmed in the sun. Verbs like release,choose, apologize, glaze the pagein jolts and juices before, yes,the adjectives arrive: crunchybecause of the teens at the caféwith their bags of chips, languidbecause who doesn’t want this worddripping with laziness to enter the spaceof creation, and bloodshot like a challenge,already boasting its many targets.Listen. I’ll only say this once. I want to apologize for the bloodshot sunthat ruled your boyhood. But I cannotrelease you on my own. If you chooseto walk with me further into this lateseason, leaves crunchy under our boots,we never…

Distances there is a linearound detroit.there are borderswhere the horizon ofbroken cement & shattered glassis a bottom line’s dream come true.you cannot heal infectionwithout medicine.what is a new plate-glass windowbut a thousand transparent dollar bills,what is a patched mile of concretebut melted bouillon,taxes turned into road tar.where did that money gobecause if the troll took itto hoard under the bridgewaiting for more goats to grift,then in time the bridge just breaksright on top of himin the richest nationever in the richest nationeverin the richest nationever.oh suburbs in flight,ask yourselves why,ask ourselves, white. Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 public school teacher in Metro Detroit where he lives with his…

Fire Proof In the dream the fire starteddownstairs, as it always does,in the middle of everything, a flaming bowl barely morethan a fist swirling to absorbour book of arguments, the late evening cards, lost socks, the latestto-do list, all atop the cat-scarredcarpet, tilting oddly but still ours for now. I somehow knew we’d losethe whole house, but we had timein the dream. The dog still lived, knew to follow me out to the car,wait on the backseat, the windowsdown, runaway heat gilding the air. In the dream, I called out to everyonewho could hear they’d better run,grab their keys and things they’d left in the dream, and I searched for…

Errands/Aberrance There are objects one procures / for a female child. Ill-fitting shorts. / (The child has too narrow a waist.) / A stiff braided belt. (The child / likes brightly colored things.) Tolkien from the library, / because book smarts are / desirable. I read in the dark, / with a flashlight, until / I am found out. Improbably, a basketball. / (The child dribbles awkwardly, / walking the length of / the garage.) I stay up past my mother’s / bedtime, crouched on the living / room rug. Before a television still / shaped like a box, watching / the Celtics lose. Like it is possible to believe…