Summer by Robin Coste Lewis
"I peeled / a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance, / His gall—to still expect our devotion / after creating love."
In My Next Life Let Me Be a Tomato by Natasha Rao
“I want to be unabashed, audacious, to gobble / space, to blush deeper each day in the sun, knowing / I’ll end up in an eager mouth.”
Mission by A.R. Ammons
"as if anything here belonged to you / as if anything here were your concern"
[Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants something] by Diane Seuss
"Goldenrod, is your dying hard? I know, / I know dying's hard. Are you reaching toward, you know, or just reaching?"
Sunflowers by Jenny George
"Having died / all the way back to the root, I grow again / into a version of the thing I love"
Clam by Mary Oliver
"Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its / place in the universe is not found out."
Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich
"There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair."