Michael Jones, “Holdings”

Michael Jones’s poetry appears in journals such as Sugar House, Salamander, and Beloit Poetry Journal, and in a chapbook, Moved (Kattywompus, 2016). He has taught since 1990 in public schools.

Holdings

Ferrari from the heyday
of Bond, James Bond gleams
like new but the vacant
hurry that hardens
the driver’s gray expression
chases a thrill that’s gone,
man. I take this as a sign,
like the one he ran:
invest ever more
in upwellings. Not of oil;
of passionate fondness
between my love and me. And:
practice dropping everything –
tides like those come as they may.

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Judith Waller Carroll, “Letter to My Husband, Away for the Weekend”

Judith Waller Carroll’s latest poetry collection, Ordinary Splendor, was published in April 2022 by MoonPath Press. She is also the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award; The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize; and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Letter to My Husband, Away for the Weekend

Fifty-two years and very few separations.
Perhaps that’s why it feels like you’re still here,
working upstairs at your computer

or reading in the chair by the window
while I putter in the kitchen,
procrastinate paying the bills.

Last night it felt strange to lie in our bed alone,
but I slept well and only missed you
in that hazy hour before dawn,

our customary snuggle
as we wait for the house to warm up,
your sleepy voice telling me your dream.

Is this what grief feels like?

The absent way I stop by your chair as if you were in it.
The same small stab of surprise
each time I find it empty.

 

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Judith Waller Carroll, “Postcard to My Younger Self”

Judith Waller Carroll’s latest poetry collection, Ordinary Splendor, was published in April 2022 by MoonPath Press. She is also the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award; The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize; and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Postcard to My Younger Self

I saw the first red maple leaf today,
the morning air crisp with expectation.
You would scoff at my latest fears:
large dogs, driving in suburban traffic.
Mostly I stay close to this house, this patch
of garden outside the sliding glass door,
voices of children drifting up from the playground.
A hummingbird just slipped past my hand,
nearly touching the pen I am holding.
Now it is hovering over a marigold
with those tiny wings that never stop whirring.

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Judith Waller Carroll, “Return”

Judith Waller Carroll’s latest poetry collection, Ordinary Splendor, was published in April 2022 by MoonPath Press. She is also the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award; The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize; and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Return

When you turned into a hundred rooms,
I returned each month as a door
that opened only once.
—Yanyi, “Landscape with a Hundred Turns”

I returned as a bright blue door with a beveled window.
A windowless green door. A broad red barn door.
The Dutch door of a European kitchen.
The oak door from my father’s childhood home.
French doors that opened to fresh air and sea breezes.
A heavy church door with a suggestion of bells
and a murmur of voices.

I returned as the door of our house by the woods
that opened on the garden with the stone bench.

When I returned as the gate to the garden,
you turned into a wild red fox.

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Susan Alexander, “Orpheus”

Susan Alexander is a Canadian poet and writer living in British Columbia on Nexwlélexm/Bowen Island, the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish people. Susan’s work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines throughout Canada, the US, and the UK. She is the author of two collections of poems, Nothing You Can Carry, 2020, and The Dance Floor Tilts, 2017, from Thistledown Press. Her suite of poems called Vigil won the 2019 Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry, while some of her other work has received the Vancouver Writers Fest and Short Grain Awards.

Orpheus

She’s just a step behind him in the hall.
He climbs into bed, watches “The Last Word” —
Lawrence O’Donnell on his laptop.

She’s in the bathroom now, brushing her hair,
all the glossy black wing of it.

Show’s over, he reads for a bit, listens
to owls behind the house. One close,
the other further off.

Books stacked on her nightstand.
Her lamp unlit. He flicks off his switch.
The dark rushes in.

Breeze through the window, silk on his cheek.
As long as he won’t reach for her,
she remains.

 

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