by Michael Sandler

I rest against the base of a pier’s pile,
a pillar probing onset of the inconstant
sea. A stack of us as monument,
as if impressed to stake an outpost of empire,

by Chris Vrountas

Stained glass leaves whisper
psalms in the breeze

Trees shimmer aers
shake thuribles
and chant an ancient rite

by Chris Vrountas

Voiceless in the dust,
stained by lunar dirt,
stung by visions of a strangled world,
he silently raged from the cosmic desert.

by Jen Schneider

he passed

quietly / the same

day as the monarch

all wings clipped

cotton trousers tucked

by Zackary Sholem Berger

A Passover poem

Going out of Egypt only to pillage wells.Nothing but what the story tells itself.I was busy catching fish to awaken love.

by Sean O’Neill

Across the steep driveway

one fat tree had fallen

as though to shield the dirt

from the automotive blitzkrieg

of one car per week, or two.

by Sean O’Neill

These parti-colored tomes,
that rank themselves
by some haphazard logic
only chance can winkle out,
are each a brimming casket
like a capsule of a stealthy mind
that has disgorged its light.

by Kathy Nelson

From the valley of the shadow (Haldol, Risperidone), my mother

wakes, happy as a warbler in pine forest. She’s forgotten how to walk

but stands from her wheelchair, teeters like a baby bird surveying air,

or like Rodin’s Old Courtesan, or like the cripple at Capernaum.

by Kathy Nelson

From the next room, a roaring crowd, pounding drums:

football on TV and five of them (picture balding heads,

elbows on knees, a huddle of brothers on the sofa).

But here, a silence of light spreads across the white sheet,

by Charm Chandler

I. from heaven

Intuition pours itself as darkness from a decanter. In the received vessel—a glass swan—it expandsinto the cosmos and transforms into a paradox, and from sight to mind, love.

by Lila Robinett

She empties her sequin backpack

rendering no markers, or games,

nothing to entertain before released

to “kid’s church.” She looks back at me

by Maxim D. Shrayer

If there weren’t any offenses,
How would neighbors mend their fences?
If we didn’t have to fast,
Life would seem so fast.