by Craig Evenson

will hold, for life in general,
the way an appended amen suspends
a second thought,
but won’t explain
how it moves in oceans

oceans, since nothing is seen
to enclose them,
defined by the things fallen
into them
and how they sink,
no place but down
to bear themselves
and whatever they hold in their teeth

how how, exactly,
we breathe ourselves into our sins
until we float.

by Leonore Hildebrandt

I worry about gutters,
the washed–out road, corroded pipes.
And squirrels — they are everywhere —
on edge, just like me.

“Go home,” I yell at the neighbor’s dogs.
Naked–pink, they scramble into the woods.

And what is wild about berry–fields?
My friend and I walk the barrens,
the esters and kettle holes
look different — almost rearranged —

with the sweep of new roads, piled rock,
machinery and warning signs.

My neighbor breeds the dogs
in kennels — all day they yip and wail.
Finally the plumber shows up,
tells me about his blocked arteries.

Landforms can be read, flow rates measured.
Go touch the wind to see how it blows.

by Didi Jackson

Your husband was a city in a country of sorrow.
You wanted a door,
you climbed a wall instead.
As some trees stay green all year,
others drop their leaves like clothes,
the sky sheds its light like a shirt,
stars fall like socks, a body heavy and jaundiced
will slide down a wall, naked, to one side or the other,
will stiffen slightly in that pose
until you find him, your eyes slipping
in the blood you never stepped in.
He was a seed in a tangle of grief.
He was lead in a river of silence.
He was a voice in the song of stillness.
He was a finger in the fist of failure.

by Major Jackson

After avocado–colored inclines, after dawdling ascents
over fern & foliage, after long trillium gazes and careful steppings
over outcrops of rocks which if not careful could
trip to foil, after delicate trail talk of marriages and births,
dates, and quarrels squashed, the tentative pace
of the new in–law, the sure–footedness of the long–ago loved,
after stop–offs to catch breath, a swig and quaff, to take this much
in, midway up journey, this resting place to further
peaks and crests, after foothold and climb, after storm’s last
sculpture of fallen trees, You, summit of my life, philosophy
of sky, You, embezzler of breaths from big and small mouths,
so that all whisper your spread–out tabernacle, a new religion, —
You ritual burst of mountain light and sparkling lake
for which we line–up taking our turns in spawns of clicks
and screens: panorama of foothills like green coats thrown
open, clouds, if only we could reach & cup into our hands,
and below, a stitched patchwork of land: lime–pastured
like flattened squares of kale. We look. We marvel at how far
we traveled through emerald, glitter, and beam.