issue 25 > poetry

• In Green-Wood Cemetery

  by Meredith Bergmann They nest among the crockets of the gate
  as quietly as gargoyles in a drought.
  
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• Trees

  by Dina Bellrham. Translated by Fernando Iturburu and Alexis Levitin. of trees
  abandoned nests
  birds migrating south
  
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• Lisis

  by Dina Bellrham. Translated by Fernando Iturburu and Alexis Levitin. i’d like you to feel
  the pain of the branches,
  
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• Concerning Wild Carrot

  by Shaune Bornholdt This meadow’s gone to seed. Denuded stalks
  Lean windward, cupping umbrelled ovaries,
  
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• In the Philadelphia 30th Street Station: My Father's Ceiling

  by Shaune Bornholdt "That's mine," my father says. (I'm five. I'm six feet closer to ninety-five feet high.)
  "I made that ceiling." I'm gripping his fedora. How did he get up there? Fly?
  My brother, country kid in city slouch, is cool. Asks about the scaffolding. Anyone die?
  
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• Death Angel

  by Darcy Cummings She’s a death angel,
  our tardy visitor,
  
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• The Return of Lolita I

  by Siomara España. Translated by Alexis Levitin. I am Lolita.
  Even if the steppenwolves
  undo my braids
  with their teeth,
  
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• The Return of Lolita II

  by Siomara España. Translated by Alexis Levitin. That’s why
  when you appeared, supplicant,
  telling me your fears,
  I let you touch me,
  
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• I say good-bye to your body

  by Siomara España. Translated by Alexis Levitin. I say good-bye to your body,
  to your eyes, to your hands,
  
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• West Window

  by Tom Hansen At six I sit at the west window,
  Watching the first faint traces of sun
  Baptize the tops of tall pines.
  
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• Night Game

  by Tom Hansen Last batter up,
  He approached the plate
  And shivered: the night had grown strange.
  
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• Pecan Trees

  by Julie Kane Don’t place your picnic table
  under a pecan tree,” goes the old
  Cajun saying. Must be an Anglo
  
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• Lady’s Slippers

  by Julie Kane She had warned us not to
           pick them in the woods
  
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• At Last

  by Michele Leavitt I’m old and wrinkled, celibate and wise,
  devoted to the passions of the mind,
  
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• The Wasp Garden

  by Michele Leavitt “Rape of Proserpine,” the colossus’s sign reads,
  “Stone Variant,” on the theme young girl some
  God of Hell abducted became a queen. Her
  Rape is looming, yet
  
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• At My Age of Eighty-Four

  by Burton Raffel This was a tree we bought in Denver,
  a two-foot plant stuck in a plastic pail.
  
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• Elephants Roost All Over Our House

  by Burton Raffel Elephants roost all over our house,
  Buddhas stare but never see
  
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• Osip and Boris

  by David Slavitt Pasternak told him:
  It is not literature, it is not poetry. It is suicide.
  Osip Emilievich nevertheless continued to recite his poem
  
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• Invention

  by David Slavitt My father’s uncle, I think, or maybe an elder
  cousin was an inventor, at least of a method
  of asking for money tactfully. The devices
  
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• Living Together

  by James Matthew Wilson Where flecks of fabric tangle with your hairs,
  Trimmed nails, the dry husks of dead beetles, bottle
  Caps flipped into a corner off our beers,
  
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