Hands

2013

Cops know that hands can kill us always, watch the hands hands comfort, carry, bring safety they hold, caress, and lift us...

Night Class

By Nicholas Voss ● 2013

It was an after school program for kids. I was ready like a manatee is ready for ping pong. Just a little clumsy after being tucked away in a collegiate cave while this city extols Saints just down the street. . . . I’ve still got a lot to learn. Like how those science quizzes didn’t apply in the van ride. . . . Where passing is keeping everyone buckled for just 3 more blocks.

A Day in the Life of Kimberly Smith

By Lillie Jordan ● 2013

Kimberly woke up this day and sat on the side of her bed, thinking. She opened her window. Just like the day before, it was wet and dark and raining. There were no birds in sight, no singing. The sun was hiding.

Esoteric

2013

She stands with bare feet On a marble bathroom floor The temperature outside has not yet Reached up to the predicted low for today These days she keeps mostly to herself No one else can bear it...

Poetry in the Ramsey County Detention Center

2013

We come from separate compartments, they from carrels, I, from my usual routine, form a circle, except for the young man next to me who turns away.

Purgatory

By Sharon Chmielarz ● 2013

It is love and sensing the departed is present somewhere between being able to be reached or not. Neither alive nor dead. It is searching, hopefully, for him...

Name Poem

2013

Riva, sounds simple But is made up of tangled detail From the blood in Israel To my flesh in America...

Winter Coming

2013

It’s autumn. Leaves have taken over the back porch and I sit at the window, hungry for soup. You have been gone for years now...

I Loved You

2013

I loved you, and I probably still do And for a while the feeling may remain But let my love no longer trouble you, I do not wish to cause you any pain...

Purgatory, or Riding the Bus Home from School

2013

There is no seat you want to sit in, no place that you belong, so you choose one near the middle, closer to the back than the front, one with a kid in it, wearing a faded jean jacket and striped watch cap. A skinny kid who stares at his hands, lying in his lap. His fingers are slender, stunning—and you are ashamed that you notice.

Work Avoidance

2013

I would like to propose the following techniques as viable displays when encountering the suckitude of work as developed and employed by my son Dylan, the demonstrative kindergartener...

Of a Kind

2013

Outside Merriam Park Library, a rusty black bike shares a lock with another well-worn bike stowed in the metal rack. Both nose their front wheels into the stanchion like lowly animals...