Fall
By Tara Shea BurkeWhen we met we fell for each other like leaves.
Behind black curtains your bedroom was always dark
except for unexpected soft-yellow walls. Your dogs
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Làt-Kat
By Elizabeth HooverÑuul, the teacher says and smacks his knee to show
where the stress falls. Ñuul, the children repeat each
starting at a different time so they sing a sour chord.
White
By Leona SevickInstead, I spotted our mother in a tiny
chair in the back row, her blue-black head
shining unnaturally. She was dressed in
Oceanside, CA
By Marie-Elizabeth MaliBalancing on crutches in the shallows
near her mother, a girl missing her right lower leg
swings her body and falls, laughing.
Ways to Count the Dead
By Persis M. KarimTake their limbs strewn about the streets—
multiply by a thousand and one.
Ask everyone in Baghdad who has lost
Anxiety Attack at 27,000 Feet
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
The Dogs and I Walked Our Woods,
By Gretchen Primackand there was a dog, precisely the colors of autumn,
asleep between two trunks by the trail.
But it was a coyote, paws pink