The Undertaking by Louise Glück
“Extend yourself— / it is the Nile, the sun is shining, / everywhere you turn is luck.”
Postcards to the Other Brown Girl in My Weightlifting Class by Tarfia Faizullah
"I do not want / to give myself—I want to be stem, / stamen, petal, not blossom, not bloom—"
I Was Told the Sunlight Was a Cure by Hanif Abdurraqib
"on the days I want to be alive I tell myself I deserve a marching band / or at least a string section to announce my arrival
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."
Orchids Are Sprouting From the Floorboards by Kaveh Akbar
"The cat mews orchids from his mouth. / His whiskers are also orchids. / The grass is sprouting orchids. / It is becoming mostly orchids."
apology by George Abraham
"forgive the bodies i swallowed like broken teeth: the knees i spent trying to summon god in my own mouth:"
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."
What We Agreed to Call “Snow” in Yorùbá by I.S. Jones
"Snow is a landscape of loneliness. // It returns to Earth if only to be touched a little longer."