Orchard of Knowing, by Paul Tran

Haunted, by Nikita Gill

I woke up during a dream at a bad part getting in trouble for enjoying something I shouldn’t which is pretty typical because I have no self control and take advantage of all the pleasure I can like a listening to people sing when they think no one can hear them and having warm toes and eating a freshly plucked raspberry but this one is forbidden and I haven’t been carrying my backpack so I don’t have my notebook to write a poem in so this post on whatever social media platform will have to do

Small Kindnesses, by Danusha Lameris

By Alice Walker

Bullet Points by Jericho Brown

I will not shoot myself

In the head, and I will not shoot myself

In the back, and I will not hang myself

With a trashbag, and if I do,

I promise you, I will not do it

In a police car while handcuffed

Or in the jail cell of a town

I only know the name of

Because I have to drive through it

To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,

But I promise you, I trust the maggots

Who live beneath the floorboards

Of my house to do what they must

To any carcass more than I trust

An officer of the law of the land

To shut my eyes like a man

Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet

So clean my mother could have used it

To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will

Do it the same way most Americans do,

I promise you: cigarette smoke

Or a piece of meat on which I choke

Or so broke I freeze

In one of these winters we keep

Calling worst. I promise if you hear

Of me dead anywhere near

A cop, then that cop killed me. He took

Me from us and left my body, which is,

No matter what we’ve been taught,

Greater than the settlement

A city can pay a mother to stop crying,

And more beautiful than the new bullet

Fished from the folds of my brain.

—from The Guardian

MYSTERIUM LUNAE

A poem for Sunday

By Colm Tóibín

Last night

I saw that the moon

Was empty in the sky.

The stars around did

What they do.

They are

Millions of miles

Away,

Or millions of years,

And are totally exhausted.

But the moon is blank,

Just a space to show

Where it might have

Been. We will tell

Whoever will attend

That the moon used to catch

Light from the sun

And waxed and waned:

Full, sickle, half-

Moon. And the songs:

“Blue Moon,” “Song to the Moon”

(From Rusalka),

“Moon River,” The Dark

Side of the Moon,

The Moon and the Melodies.

It was all the rage, once,

The moon.

It was a large step,

A sad step,

For mankind.

Soon, the sun will run

Out of hydrogen

And it will all

Be gone.

The disappearance

Of the moon

Is just the start.

I am working day and night

On my book,

Knowing it will

Be the final word

On the matter.

I will compose,

With aid from scientists,

A description in concise

Prose, of the time before the bang,

The gorgeous vacancy,

The pre-astral soup,

Gravity dancing like

A herring

On the griddle—oh,

And the sly almostness

Of atoms and particles,

And how long a neutron

Took to be certain

That it was not a proton,

And the war

Between infinity and

Eternity that would have

Gone on forever

Had the world,

Oozing immanence,

Not begun to roll,

With its built-in

Obsolescence,

Its sell-by date,

Its oomph, its ooh-la-la,

Its everything that

Is the case.

It is calm here

Now. Waves have

Stopped, of course.

The sea has settled

Down; soon it will

Be a flyover state.

There is

Nothing to compel

Its tides.

At gatherings, they read

Matthew Arnold’s poem

And marvel

At the lines about the

Sea being calm tonight.

What else is there?

But it wasn’t always calm.

I can swear to that.

I remember

Redondo Beach

And the waves high

And the sun

Going down

Over the horizon.

Strange, I have

No memory of the moon.

But it must have been there

Somewhere.

But, no matter what, you can

Look all you want—

The moon is in the past,

Like analogue,

Or the Western Seaboard,

Or the library at Alexandria,

Or sic transit gloria

Mundi, a lovely

Old saying

Long eclipsed

By more fashionable

Tongues that yet are

Speechless at

The vacancy

In the night sky.

They are

Howling at the

Thing not there,

That we want back

Now, or at least

Soon.