As the story goes, the raven’s wings
aren’t black. They’re waves, capping
dark omens. Crows with curtained throats.
Who knows what falls from the shelf
inside us. Even gods skin their knees
to bleed. The man at the end of the aisle
is pocketing two-for-one toothbrushes.
The cashier is hand-perking her breasts
and picking her teeth with a receipt.
I’m sorry you won’t see your son, his skin
peeling its white scarf through blizzards.
I haven’t sanded the road, won’t
strut across town in my ballet slippers.
Your shape in this bed is my shape.
Erase my whole notes from your page.
Two stoplights ago, the wind
off a pickup pulled us further from home.
When I said the moonlight made graves
to square off the night, I meant to say
pull over. Listen: my heart’s a gutter
of ravens tugging at the firmament.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Moira Egan

Rain brings the husband home early,
white dots specking his neck and skull,

a primered knuckle through the milk jug
without apology for the swig

or cold hand on her breast. Downed lines
mean dark when he’d rather have sun

to finish the job, or if here, like now, inside her,
light to watch himself by (and her), overalls

at his ankles, spattered with the colors
of the housewives of the neighborhoods.

Naked he’s hers again, until the throb of power
restored, the refrigerator

kicking in, and under the stairs
where his ribs anchor hers to the floor,

a bare bulb burning into her eyes.
Outside — the deck slick, boots

warped with chill, amphibious —
there’s his forehead to kiss

and the letdown of thunder, the crotch
of her jeans gritting along her skin’s

seam. At her feet, to the spit
of soaked gravel (his retreating tires)

a handful of furred sow’s ears listen
for spring without head or brain.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Jehanne Dubrow

There go the dead leaves, there go
the sticks. She is rushing, anxious
to usher away the last rain.

What moving water says to the senses:
We are all connecting, concocting
means of reaching into each other’s

being. You’ll rot knocking into your own
walls. Water will wear down the walls
of the shack that has sat on the edge

of the creek since before the first
storm of three, the three big storms
that sank us into dissipation.

Deep in the creek wait the remains
of the roots of the tree that made
the shack. Any gaze sustains it: yours,

mine, suspends it between rain
and creek, inviting and heavy, wanting it
back. Look away and let it go back.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by David Sanders

Courage and horror stand side by side,

say the gods who 

                      dole out fates. Like      the one they give

             the massage therapist 

raped                      in her office     by a

             stranger off the street.
                              Raped face-down 

on her table, in                           dimness and 

                      lavender oil. No,         this is yours, say 

the gods,
handing off 

             a profusion of fall days      in Boston, when
                                           the boy you loved
                                           was dying. Each morning 

     on your way to see him                you cut a bouquet 

of cosmos from
the front steps of
a brownstone.
                      The other, not yours,
                                                is braver than yours, how
                                                        it ends —

                      the therapist feared she would die 

hating him and began to chant, 

                      and the panicked rapist   ran, not knowing 

                                      she was chanting the
                              Buddhist prayer
                      for compassion.         

                                      And did you sing for your enemies?          

                              No. 

The gods are busy.          

                                           The cosmos are lavender,

                              rose, tangled and 

                                                orange, 

                      replacing themselves in what 

seems hours.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Steve Mueske

And she will slap me & slam
out of this story.

Another prison narrative
ending in photography.

We were drinking chamomile tea,
contemplating international apples.

You were having a good visit with your spirit
& a terribly awkward friend.

Now at the airport, a person
who has difficulty with authenticity
climbs out of her plastic bags.

In actions as well as words,
we are sorry.

Lately you’ve been glistening
in & out of luck,
filling one notebook after another.

Lately you’ve been wandering.

I faced east to know you
but you were already recording
our farewell music,

a tinny drum & just a few bells…

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Matthew Nienow

Our napkins have sailed
lap to lip, lie stained with the same
shadow settled in empty cups,
twilight loosening visual hold.
Sunset isn’t finished yet,
sky still working the color of rosehip —
I’m hoping for a steeped pink
that may never come.
Ruann says she has a gift
for reading tea leaves, washed-up
bits claiming symbiotic dreams —
she doesn’t want to hear about
my life’s cause-and-effect,
an old brew of past choices,
patterns and directions
even I don’t bother to read.
My bad mood deflected
by Ru’s upbeat,
who turns on the patio light,
telling me I’ve got nothing
to worry about, a new job
at the bottom of my cup.
Her neighbor meanwhile
is out in his yard again,
misting his red dangling
fuchsias, spying on us
through that hole in the fence,
the greedy eye of hard times
already staring me down.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by April Christiansen

A woman walks to the river every day,
out of a Babylon of wild horses and insubordinate

goats, her white dress flows off her like milk.
She carries a scale and a vase and her blindfold

has slipped enough to let her see
the path that avenues through boulders

moonburst with lichen and the cave
near the apple trees draped with snakes.

She walks to the water, where her dress falls
from her, where her blindfold decorates

the stones crowding the river’s edge, where
she slides into the smoky water glowing like a moon.

The elders watch from their blind
of olive trees that smell green in the sun

and the air smells of granite and pine
and beneath the bright, too bright, sun,

the stone smells only of itself.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Brett Harrington

Stop the car. There. Now
breathe with me. That broken

Ford needs only a swift kick
to set it right. Listen. The radio

man says For Sale, says Believe.
You believed in me. I believed

in highways. We fell in love.
I’m sorry. I know this bone-white

sky isn’t right. I had to see it
myself. Stare down the throat

of a double-wide, walk the blasted
streets of Billings. This was me,

years before you. I wanted to say
Montana again, and mean it.

Yes. I know. It’s never enough.
The world is mostly broken.

But listen. Breathe with me
here. Taste the dust. We have

three days of highway. I’ll drive,
carry these nowhere bones. Home.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Rachel Mallino

Who could help it — chalked hop-scotch
on the sidewalk, don’t we always jump?

Now I know elephants do not appear in clouds,
and no one puts messages in a bottle anymore,
but there was the massage: empty apartment,

tall ceilings, white walls, windowsill candles,
and across the pub table you did offer

a pot of gold at this end of the rainbow —
so who said yes to climbing pigmy oaks,
hanging up-side-down for pictures,

and climbing the air in playground swings
passing each other in opposite directions,

yes, to playing air-hockey left-handed,
yes, to skin and eyelashes and fingernails on skin?
I did. And you did. Even if the message reads,

No one ever wins; we’re always chasing a tail,
pretending to play fair, pretending love

is a possibility tangible as plastic pucks,
telling ourselves that this time will be
different. Last time I watched him smell

tomatoes in the garden: cupping his hands,
scooping the leaves like water to his face.
Last time those hands made me come,

last silences curved and hollow as a conch.
Hold it to your ear and hear God creating.

Didn’t we trust that voice once? So much
like a mother’s, shaping hope with the shape
of a mouth always moving yet also poised

to receive what we to had to offer,
a body for holding, a body for breathing

which wasn’t and somehow was enough,
is enough. It has been broken for you,
I have been broken for you. Will you part

your lips to receive me as the host
the morning we prepare breakfast?

I’ll brew coffee and you’ll harvest rosemary
for eggs. And in this communion, light
will play a game too: now you see me,

now you don’t. And we will believe
the other will emerge from a blind spot,

for a moment brilliant and glowing.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Nic Sebastian

There, just in front of the jetty, a boy had drowned
after a boat wake sucked him down. I know him.
To understand, to remember his name places me
among the several damned. It is of the best days.

The earth, fresh. The surfers practice
their cursives on the waves. That part of the beach
is cordoned off by yellow caution streamers
which click in the wind. Kids fly their kites by the scene,

while parents beckon them back to their proper blankets.
I am becalmed. The ocean pools around me
crossing itself back into itself. I too am
a boy and therefore, a camera — the glittering

sun-sea continuum is all I know of the world.
But it is not the world, and this shoal
has its share of ghosts. Each curl
comes forth to wash me, clavicle to femur,

my elbow tucked under my hand
as I hold my arm tight to my body. Stick
straight, I withstand each buffet, spray
on my lips and the cold fastidious fingers

of ocean water down my length.
Sand, like a thin mustard plaster on my back,
I shred the grains as I move. A scatter-fire of selves
leap into the water. I am trying my best

to wade to the boats, but the white
intensity of the sun holds me. Beneath me
does not look like the grave of anybody,
anybody at all. It is just green and loll. The diatoms

join and part and join again.
The gulls skirl above my head, sacramental
and in crescendo. They speak for my voice
because things are as they are. Slim islands

rise, just within my view and I imagine
the dead boy is there, reigning over a procession
of candles and crosses. His ankles
festooned with peonies and he is forever

twelve. I want to talk to that boy. I want to hold
his hand and walk headlong to the horizon.
I want the masts of the tall ships to not be
funerary wands but kindling branches

held aloft to steer us from the depths
of these deep seas. Let the blood in my body
drag me down awhile. Let the coral
and the moray eel open pathways for us in the reef.

Let me remember a boy who was a boy.

Visit the site to listen to an audio recording of this poem, read by Davis McCombs