I Wonder If I Need the Rapture or If I Could Just Swallow A Catastrophe and Call It Good by Kelli Russell Agodon
“In a perfect world, we would slow dance / with someone we love” — Kelli Russell Agodon
absence. displacement. by Etel Adnan
“I love the rain when it / wraps me like a / river” — Etel Adnan
Summer by Robin Coste Lewis
"I peeled / a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance, / His gall—to still expect our devotion / after creating love."
Mission by A.R. Ammons
"as if anything here belonged to you / as if anything here were your concern"
Slow Dance by the Ocean by Linda Gregg
"The world moves, my Lord, and I stay still, / yielding as it passes through."
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."
Wild Oats by W.S. Merwin
"September when the wind / drops and to us it seems / that the days are waiting / I needed my mistakes / in their own order / to get me here"
Being in This World Makes Me Feel Like a Time Traveler by Kaveh Akbar
"One day I stopped in a lobby for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres / and ever since, the life of this world has seemed still."
“Why Is This Age Worse…?” by Anna Akhmatova
"In a stupor of grief and dread / have we not fingered the foulest wounds / and left them unhealed by our hands?"
The Leash by Ada Limón
"But sometimes, I swear I hear it, the wound closing / like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move / my living limbs into the world without too much / pain