John Koethe

Argument in Isolation Premise: one exists alone, Within a system of increasingly mild ideals —The good of love, the greater good of dreams— Abstracted from the musings of the grown-up child That somewhere, in a scene above the sky, Lies smiling. Anxious to begin Before the will can answer and its passions fly away Like […]

Fernando Pessoa

Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day. — Fernando Pessoa

Kaveh Akbar

I hear crickets chirp and think of my weaker heart, the tiny one sewn behind the one that beats. It lives there made entirely of watery pink light, flapping at dawn like a baby’s cheek. —Kaveh Akbar, from “Exciting the Canvas,” Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Book, 2017)

Keith Waldrop

Think how many, by now, have escaped the world’s memory. — Keith Waldrop, from “Tuning,” The House Seen from Nowhere (Litmus Press, 2002)

Alice Wright

These dogwood branches on the windowsill—they’re my touch, stemming freshly. In my spell I am suspended, seamed into soft-drawn letters I’ve just learned. Is this the floating feeling when you’ve come into love? — Alice Wright, from “Photograph: Alice Allgood Cooper on Her Wedding Trip,” ecotone (Spring/Summer 2017)