Weather Man

BY PATRICIA TRAXLER
When it snows, he stands
at the back door or wanders
around the house to each . . .
Traveling with Guitar
BY DEBRA MARQUART
For you can travel with a screaming red rolling bag
and float unnoticed on conveyors, through terminals
. . .
Thanksgiving for Two
BY MARJORIE SAISER
The adults we call our children will not be arriving
with their children in tow for Thanksgiving.
We must make our feast ourselves, . . .
Sustenance
BY BARBARA CROOKER
The sky hangs up its starry pictures: a swan,
a crab, a horse. And even though you re
three hundred miles away, I know you see . . .
Brushing Teeth with My Sister after the Wake
BY JIM DANIELS
at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs
clogged with family from out of town
spending the night after the wake . . .
Turnt
BY JULIANA SPAHR
Sometimes it feels like it is over and it's not.
Sometimes it feels like it has just begun and it's over.
. . .
Tradition
BY JULIANA SPAHR
I hold out my hand.
I hand over
and I pass on. . . .
Dynamic Positioning
BY JULIANA SPAHR
It is dynamic positioning that
Allows a semi-submersible the
. . .
Transitory, Momentary
BY JULIANA SPAHR
The Brent geese fly in long low wavering lines on their migrations.
They start in western Europe, fatten in Iceland, then fly over the
Greenland ice cap to Canada. They sometimes breed on the Arctic . . .
Please Don't
BY TONY HOAGLAND
tell the flowers they think
the sun loves them.
The grass is under the same . . .
Special Problems in Vocabulary
BY TONY HOAGLAND
There is no single particular noun
for the way a friendship,
stretched over time, grows thin, . . .
Thrashing Seems Crazy
BY JULIANA SPAHR
this is true
a man in an alley grabbed my arm
this is true . . .

Armed Services Editions

BY JEHANNE DUBROW
My copy of The Fireside Book of Verse
is as the seller promised the stapled spine,
the paper aged to Army tan no worse . . .
Responding
BY JULIANA SPAHR
I
This is a place without a terrain a government that always
changes an unstable language. Even buildings disappear
from day to day. . . .
Marathon
BY NICK FLYNN
Petals
on a river, a tree in blossom, one
pink bud unopened falls . . .
Philip Seymour Hoffman
BY NICK FLYNN
Last summer I found a small box stashed away in my apartment,
a box filled with enough Vicodin to kill me. I would have sworn
that I'd thrown it away years ealier, but apparently not. I stared . . .
If This is Your Final Destination
BY NICK FLYNN
They say you are made of clouds, they say you
are made of feathers, they say you are everywhere
or nowhere we know you are both. Our flight . . .
Put the Load on Me
BY NICK FLYNN
Here, at
your feet, all the gargoyles of heaven
kneel upon your furnace, their tongues . . .
Kafka
BY NICK FLYNN
The cause of death seems to have been
starvation his throat closed
. . .
Belly of the Beast
BY NICK FLYNN
Here again
at the edge of what was,
. . .