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.

by Major Jackson

Five gold wash crystal pearls on a wrist.
Her seraph–skin glistening when a spigot is turned off
in the apartment next door, letting out
a rusty squeak. A tabby licks a paw.

An evening dinner of lightning in clouds, the sky’s release
of electrical surplus followed by Porchetta
with wilted greens tossed in Arbequina olive oil and lemon.

Layers of clothes topped by her sinamay straw derby hat.
A thin wisp of sheen above his brow.
Until all at once they voicelessly consume
the echoes of all their past.

Possible objects of high regard: stalactites dripping
in a cave, delicately carved tortoiseshell comb,
cambers of her body.

by G. H. Smith

What was it, muse, you
so desperately wanted me to say?
You tried everything to no avail.
Even now steeped in well–earned
self pity, I remain
deaf as a black hole.

The answer must lie
in the past some small detail
so insignificant that
it got overlooked.

For both our sakes,
I wish I knew
how to please you
and thus be relieved
of my responsibilities.

What good can come
from heaping further abuse?
Send me love, youth,
The temptation of unattainable dreams.
I promise to be eloquent.