the Hudson has a magnet smell
dark water railroad track
spongy grass
rocks scattered wrappers tossed
the Hudson has a railroad depot
abandoned revived
a party for
a cousin turning eighty
the freight trains go by
a long chain clanging
guests turn not hearing
each other the roar subsides
stranger beside me
remembers Johnny Mathis
and I do yes Chances Are
didn’t sex send sparks
we compare he saw Miles at a dive
I saw Ahmad Jamal come what may
his Poinsiana I’ll learn
to love forever
he loves certain lyrics
a guide on how to live
four years
since his wife died
he leaves keeps returning
his pressing need
for the forgotten prelude
to Hello Young Lovers
and then he has it
when the earth smelled of summer
and the river
and the sky was streaked with white
we sing beyond us
the huge barge of trash
pushed by a small tugboat
navigates the Hudson
– Holly Guran
Author’s Note: The Hudson River that flowed below my childhood home, the high school I attended, and my close relatives’ town is always a force in my work.…
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You hand out names to the hummingbirds that squabble
a few feet away—on the patio, perching
and racing past like fighter pilots, divebombing
the red plastic feeder that drips
and sways on a
hook.
We eat breakfast and we watch as sparrows
greedily vacuum the food you pour into
a shallow dish each morning. And when they catch us
peeking at them, they scatter, splashing
seeds—sunflower, safflower, millet, milo, flax,
cracked corn.
I’m off to my next meeting, you say.
We work a dozen feet apart nowadays. And
you haul it all—laptop and mouse, notepad, and books—
to the bedroom. I follow you with a chair to
the place where you attend these meetings
(and job interviews).
Where we plot our escape every night.
Alone together.…
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I very much dislike being at a buffet
– Mary Ruefle
I stand in the stairwell say to him that he
and I aren’t going to work out, him being
a cowboy, aspiring cop. He marries a librarian.
I go on to psychedelics, sit-ins, join a cult,
marry and move to a place he would’ve hated.
My mother tells me, twenty years in, she’s
heard he still has my picture on his mantle.
You never lose the first he-was-everything-to-me.
I’ve googled him over the years, imagined
how a call might go, nearly did one summer.
From the poem “How We Met” from Dunce
– Hari B Parisi…
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The sunlight explores the walls
of the apartment we share
like a rabid cockroach.
I crack the body
with a firm stomp, one foot—
shoeless. Together, the dog
I call the love of my life,
and I hold a small service.
The dog has a few nice
things to say. I cry for the third
time today. The body lays
in a planter on the fire escape,
three inches down in the dirt,
where a month later grows
a peony, your favorite flower,
clearly in love with the light.
– Kakie Pate…
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The air for months
an apocalyptic blanket,
jaundiced shimmer from stones and dirt.
How does your
world end? A pandemic
for real next time,
wet bulb temps settling
along your latitude sooner than expected,
a decade from now or three?
Do you require
global holocaust, or is a burnt town, town
by town
enough? How far away is Talent, Oregon
Paradise, California. How near
is here it is. We walk outside breathing
ash, breathing bone, sucking whatever
we can into lungs, thick greasy air
enshawling our shoulders,
robes we’ll be wearing till
the end.
– Claudia Putnam
Author’s Note: “Raiment” is part of a chapbook MS composed at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in 2021.…
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A round-bottomed toy that rights itself when
one attempts to push it over.
– Wikipedia
My dental hygienist
looks and sighs.
My son takes my car
to the car-wash.
Again I dream
I forgot my dog
in a locked garage.
Don’t you too
get swamped by
one guiltwave
after another,
don’t we struggle
to keep the
straight when
the car wants to veer,
don’t we ache…
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bitch, he says.
stupid bitch,
reaching over the counter for my colleague
whilst his girlfriend stands behind him
looking bored.
at least, I assume she’s bored
under those big sunglasses.
they get their refund in the end.
it’s the quickest way to get rid of them.
it’s the only way:
a company
can’t accuse an individual
of inappropriate behaviour.
that would be fascism.
apparently.
I think.
anyway,
no – my shaken teary colleague
CANNOT have a break:
can’t she see how long the queue is now?
– Paul Tanner…
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