Summer

Summer, brilliant at the door
wide, sweet shawl, green cicada
bird calls, wild by the feeder
and showers glisten on the rocks

and Woolf, hillocks, hammock, sea
and rapture 
and nothing breaks
just the sun’s spine on yours

just laughter with long teeth.

— Santiago

Szczebrzeszyn

She tells a Polish tonguetwister
Her voice a soft wind
Slipping through tall grass

W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie

In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds.

— Daniel Stephensen

For You

My gift to you will be this:
A heart full of happiness
Often eclipsed by
Longing
Gingersnaps on autumn
Afternoons
Being myself at all costs
A poem you’ll find
Tucked into something
On ordinary days
And love when you need
It the most

— Michelle Dent

Joy

When it comes back to teach you
or you come back to learn
how half alive you’ve been,
how your own ignorance and arrogance
have kept you deprived—
when it comes back to you
or you yourself return,
joy is simple, unassuming.
Red tulips on their green stems.
Early spring vegetables, bright in the pan.
The primary colors of a child’s painting,
the first lessons, all over again.

— gabrielxtc

(Reading letters like this one is like opening the curtains to a bright, sunny Saturday morning - thank you doesn’t quite express what I want to say.)

Plum blossoms
the cold spring wind
becomes my home

— Kris Lindbeck

Key

Now it is pulseblood
Now rays of slipmeaning
Now words storm themselves

Now glow but not emit
Now longing in echo
Now I become her

My heart forever
Helplessly in bloom.

— Daniel Stephensen