Dear Death 
KATHLEEN MCGOOKEY
 
can't you see we're busy riding bikes in the sun? Later we'll cut out
paper hearts and sprinkle them with glitter. I have had enough of
you. I'd rather learn facts about penguins: what they eat, how much
they weigh, how they stay warm in the Antarctic. Some are called
Emperor. Some, Rockhopper. First-graders with gap-toothed smiles
hold out the class guinea pig for me to pet. Let's pretend you forget
all about us.
 
Source: Originally published in Heart in a Jar, Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2017

Voice Clear As
KEMI ALABI                                                            
 
When my mom discovers heaven’s just a noise festival

the godchoir of all her loves breathing
unsnagged by asthma or Newport-dragged lung

the true song life makes untethered from a body
tugged at last from the men who hold its reins

will she blame her pastors (like I did)
for Sunday portraits of pooled white gold?

Will she miss the wooden flute of her body
mourn the days corner-propped, cloaked in dust

too pious to disturb a room’s skin cells
and stray hair with her sound

snapped awake at the nightmare of a slip fringe
the private note sung aloud?

Or, unburdened by hell

​will she exhale
and hear the bells?
 
Source: poets.org.  Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 16, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Courtyard
DARIEN HSU GEE
 
Her new family has her dowry—her chickens have become his chickens. Clipped wings fly the short distance to nowhere. Her future husband has returned to the village. His parents had sent a message to the university: Come home quickly. There is an emergency. It took several days to make the journey and he arrived weary, expecting an ailing father. Instead, a wedding ceremony with him as the man of honor, and her, sitting on the bed, dressed and waiting, vision obscured. She tries to imagine what he looks like. When he lifts the heavy red veil from her face, she sees kind eyes. She lies with him that night, spreads her legs and consecrates the marital bed. The next morning, she is alone. Her new husband has returned to school in Shanghai, a city she has only heard of. Her husband is an educated man, she cannot read or write. He is Jīdūjiào—a Christian. No one in the village understands this, not even his own parents. She tends the graves of his ancestors, looks after his mother and father as if they were her own. Nine months later, a girl is born, company for a short time—the baby dies an infant. Still he does not return. All that remains is a handful of chickens, the rest slaughtered for her wedding banquet.

Source: Poetry Daily .  Originally published in Other Small Histories, Poetry Society of America.  Copyright © 2020 by Darien Hsu Gee.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further PossibilitiesCHEN CHEN
 
To be a good
ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship
advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable
hospital bed for my mother. To be

no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,
America for my uncle, who wants to be China

for me. To be a country of trafficless roads
& a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go

fast. To be a cyclone
of laughter when my parents say

their new coworker is like that, they can tell
because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t,

can’t be one of them. To be the one
my parents raised me to be--

a season from the planet
of planet-sized storms.

​To be a backpack of PB&J & every
thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming

their own storms. To be, for me, nobody,
homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D

& be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars,
simple decoration for the new apartment

with you. To be close, J.,
to everything that is close to you--

blue blanket, red cup, green shoes
with pink laces.

To be the blue & the red.
The green, the hot pink.

Source:  Originally published in When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2017). Found at poetryfoundation.org

​Ways to Disappear
CAMILLE RANKINE                                       

In the dark
Down a stairwell
Through the doorway
Gone west
With a new wish
In daylight
Down the sidewalk
In a wool coat
In a white dress
Without a name
Without asking
On your knees
On your stomach
Gone silent
In the backseat
In the courtroom
In a cage
In the desert
In the park
Gone swimming
On the shortest night
At the bottom of the lake
In pieces
In pictures
Without meaning
Without a face
Seeking refuge
In a new land
Gone still
In the heart
With your head bowed
In deference
In sickness
In surrender 
With your hands up
On the sidewalk
In the daylight
In the dark

Sadness Isn’t The Only Muse
DERRICK AUSTIN
 
I can’t imagine myself reading bedtime stories
to a toddler, and I’m older than my father was
when he read those brightly colored books to me.
His voice is deeper than mine will ever be
but just as sweet. I always picked Freight Train.
I loved the black caboose. A train runs across this track…
through tunnels and cities, darkness and light, forever.
I still love books where nothing happens,
good or bad. The page is one landscape I move through.
 
Source: Poetry Daily

Imagine Weather Indoors. Perhaps a thunderstorm in the attic? A tornado in the kitchen.   I love the magical realism in this prompt, and  wish I could remember where I saw this because I'd like to give proper credit.  It's been so long ago.  So.  Here we are . . . time to write!

Glen Uig
RICHARD HUGO

Believe in this couple this day who come
to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain
no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic
under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired
of giants and heroes and know they believe
in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks.

Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke
played by those wise tiny creatures far from
the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane.
Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin,
sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside
Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock
that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king.

These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe,
have lived through it all: the Viking occupation,
clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War
II bomber gone down, a fiery boom
on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard
the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below
where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig.
They remember the Viking who wandered off course,
under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done.

Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out
wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed
and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts
sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them
a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond,
the monster is in it small as a wren.

Believe the couple who have finished their picnic
and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures
cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day
you left home forever and the cold open way
a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you
and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny
and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

Source: Poets.org