poetry

A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson

And if I speak of Paradise,
then I'm speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they can't steal it, she'd say.
And if life puts you under pressure,
trace its ridges in your pocket,
smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,
hum its anthe

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“Reconciliation” by Jónína Kirton:

“how will I reconcile myself?
the Icelander and the métis
the settler and the
Indigenous
an ally to myself
since birth flung across a
chasm
I often wonder am I to
forever be
the way across
weak anchors at each end
my spine a flexible deck
load-bearing
and within my cables too
much tension
as some try to cross
we all swing wildly
in

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Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other

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All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs By Christian Wiman

All my friends are finding new beliefs.

This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.

In a highly literary and hitherto religiously-indifferent Jew

God whomps on like a genetic generator.

Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.

Exercise regimens so extreme she merges with machine.

One

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Wishing Well by Gregory Pardlo

Outside the Met a man walks up sun
tweaking the brim sticker on his Starter cap
and he says pardon me Old School he
says you know is this a wishing well?
Yeah Son I say sideways over my shrug.
Throw your bread on the water.
I tighten my chest wheezy as Rockaway beach
sand with a pull of faux smoke from my e-cig
to cozy the

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Phase One by Dilruba Ahmed

For leaving the fridge open
last night, I forgive you.
For conjuring white curtains
instead of living your life.

For the seedlings that wilt, now,
in tiny pots, I forgive you.
For saying no first
but yes as an afterthought.

I forgive you for hideous visions
after childbirth, brought on by loss
of sleep. And when the baby woke
repeate

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Say I forgot by Lorraine Mariner

Say I forgot how to love you, the way

when I was eight I forgot how to swim?

Could you steel yourself as my mother did

when she enrolled me in lessons for the holiday,

sat up in the stalls with a four-year-old

every morning for a month and afternoons

took me swimming herself in a learner pool

let me grip her hands willing

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Reporting Back to Queen Isabella

Written by Lorna Goodison

When Don Cristobal returned to a hero’s welcome,
his caravels corked with treasures of the New World,
he presented his findings; told of his great adventures
to Queen Isabella, whose speech set the gold standard
for her nation’s language. When he came to Xamaica
he described it so: ‘The fairest

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