I Am Learning to Abandon the World by Linda Pastan
"And every night I give my body up / limb by limb, working upwards / across bone, towards the heart."
The Conditional by Ada Limón
"Say we spend our last moments staring / at each other, hands knotted together"
Leaf by Seán Hewitt
"For woods are forms of grief / grown from the earth. For they creak / with the weight of it."
Performance After the End of the World by Talin Tahajian
"I’ve never been good / at caring very much about language except / when it matters the most."
September a week in by Hala Alyan
"I’m trying to be enough / for this body: one heartbeat, flung like a shovel into the day."
Once by Eavan Boland
"I do not want us to be immortal or unlucky. / To listen for our own death in the distance."
The Light Continues by Linda Gregg
"When the sun / is gone, the light continues / high up in the sky for a while. / When I return, the moon is there. / Like a changing of the guard."
You Think You Are Something Less Real Than You Are by Wendy Xu
"There is nothing / you won’t put on. You put on the darkness. / You put on some stars and even what / is between them. You put on the moon."
Imagine Sisyphus Happy by Nicole Sealey
"But birds / pluck their own feathers, dogs / lick themselves to wound. Allow me this / luxury. Give me tonight to cut / and salt the open."