"A Date," Kevin McFadden

The first seated takes the chance he’ll be

stood up. She’s getting on with the hope she may

get off. One and one make one

in this riddle. Or, more closely, comedy routine:

first, impressions; second, observations.

Impolite to have thirds. Bachelors and bachelorettes

beware: more than tonight they can mess up your order.

Who would go for the lobster expects the claws.

No pets allowed, keep your shirt on, places this strict—

like loony bins—require a jacket, sir. Mark sudden pauses,

gaps in the flap, commas where a sutra might be...

and what shall we make of it, love, perhaps?

What elevator is this anyway, that even the prospect

of going down has made you high?

What’re you on?

"That Feeling," Karley Dobis

That feeling that you get,
when your stomach's about to drop,
do you know which feeling I'm talking about?
the one that makes life pop.

That's the feeling that I get,
right inside of me,
and that feeling that I get,
is all I want to be.

I feel it here,
I feel it there,
I get it so much,
it shakes the atmosphere.

The more that I get it,
the more I believe,
that anything is possible,
that I can achieve.

It takes over my mind,
it fills up my soul,
this feeling that I get,
never makes life dull.

I'm not just a golfer,
I have another light,
and this feeling that I get,
is the one when I write.

"Palindrome," Lisel Mueller

There is less difficulty—indeed, no logical difficulty at all—in
imagining two portions of the universe, say two galaxies, in which
time goes one way in one galaxy and the opposite way in the
other. . . . Intelligent beings in each galaxy would regard their own
time as “forward” and time in the other galaxy as “backward.”
—Martin Gardner, in Scientific American 

Somewhere now she takes off the dress I am

putting on. It is evening in the antiworld

where she lives. She is forty-five years away

from her death, the hole which spit her out

into pain, impossible at first, later easing,

going, gone. She has unlearned much by now.

Her skin is firming, her memory sharpens,

her hair has grown glossy. She sees without glasses,

she falls in love easily. Her husband has lost his

shuffle, they laugh together. Their money shrinks,

but their ardor increases. Soon her second child

will be young enough to fight its way into her

body and change its life to monkey to frog to

tadpole to cluster of cells to tiny island to

nothing. She is making a list:

Things I will need in the past

lipstick

shampoo

transistor radio

Sergeant Pepper

acne cream

five-year diary with a lock

She is eager, having heard about adolescent love

and the freedom of children. She wants to read

Crime and Punishment and ride on a roller coaster

without getting sick. I think of her as she will

be at fifteen, awkward, too serious. In the

mirror I see she uses her left hand to write,

her other to open a jar. By now our lives should

have crossed. Somewhere sometime we must have

passed one another like going and coming trains,

with both of us looking the other way.

"Summer Music," May Swenson

Summer is all a green air—
From the brilliant lawn, sopranos
Through murmuring hedges
Accompanied by some poplars;
In fields of wheat, surprises;
Through faraway pastures, flows
To the horizon's blues
In slow decrescendos.

Summer is all a green sound—
Rippling in the foreground
To that soft applause,
The foam of Queen Anne's lace.
Green, green in the ear
Is all we care to hear—
Until a field suddenly flashes
The singing with so sharp
A yellow that it crashes
Loud cymbals in the ear,
Minor has turned to major
As summer, lulling and so mild,
Goes golden-buttercup-wild.

"The Cold Within," unknown

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In dark and bitter cold
Each possessed a stick of wood--
Or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
But the first one held hers back,
For, of the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

The next one looked cross the way
Saw one not of his church,
And could not bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.

The third one sat in tattered clothes
He gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?

The rich man just sat back and thought
Of wealth he had in store,
And keeping all that he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.

The  black man's face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from his sight,
For he saw in his stick of wood
A chance to spite the white.

And the last man of this forlorn group
Did nought except for gain,
Giving just to those who gave
Was how he played the game,

Their sticks held tight in death's stilled hands
Was proof enough of sin;
They did not die from cold without--
They died from cold within.

"Dust," Dorianne Lux

Someone spoke to me last night,

told me the truth. Just a few words,

but I recognized it.

I knew I should make myself get up,

write it down, but it was late,

and I was exhausted from working

all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Now, I remember only the flavor —

not like food, sweet or sharp.

More like a fine powder, like dust.

And I wasn’t elated or frightened,

but simply rapt, aware.

That’s how it is sometimes —

God comes to your window,

all bright light and black wings,

and you’re just too tired to open it.

"What I learned from my mother," Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewing even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.