"Rooftops, Brooklyn" Fidelia Bridges, 1867

by Debasish Mishra

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For reach one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
–Samuel Beckett

Imagine we’re                 all clinging to                 one breast

one mouth                       must withdraw              for the other 

and                                    the other                         for another

so that                              the milk                           is shared

and also                           the lactating                   mother

the mouths                     deprived of                      milk

drink the tears               till another turn             of the gyre

we’re siblings                 for more                          than one reason

our cravings for             love and carvings          on skin

architecture                    of the same                     school

and our knowledge       of universal                    truths

are derived                     from the same               hearth

of history                        and habit                        our methods

of killing                         a mosquito                     and of making

love                                 are tangents                   of a fixed

diameter                        our despair                     is tinted

like tears                        and our hopes               are milk-white

the gloss                        of an undying                flashlight

Debasish Mishra,

"Hills around the Bay of Moulin Huet, Guernsey" Auguste Renoir, 1883

by Geoffrey Babbitt

“Using logic and reason to explain… is likely to make them agitated…. Instead, the best thing you can
                         do is not try to bring them back into reality.”—dailycaring.com

I:I remember looking out our car window on the way there. It was early summer, and a whole meadow
 was covered with blue wildflowers.

Father:I want to go to the cabin now and sit on the back deck.

Not sure whether they were blue flax,

"Red Sea" painting by JoAnneh Nagler

by Olivia Calderón

The earth is salted
with the tears of giants
and now only dead things grow.

The seasons change around them.
Frost, leaves, thawing, they
never moved. Not an inch.

But something changed.

Because the crops reek of rot,
the soil is boiling blue, and there’s
mold creeping through husks of husks.

They said there was no other option.
They said they were grieving and sorry.
They said it would all be over soon.

"Falling From Heaven" painting by JoAnneh Nagler

by Micah Cozzens

 

Sisters and I share a room and they say, Did you bite
my lipstick in half like a carrot?
No, I lie. I didn’t. I didn’t.
They let me sit on the lid-down toilet and watch
them try on smooth dresses
while they push their hair into cylinders,
coils that sproing hot and then, after teasing,
expand into voluminous gleaming,
lacquered to shine in the cheap lighting
of a movie theater, a bad restaurant,

"The Light Never Sleeps" painting by JoAnneh Nagler

by Timothy Liu

So this is where love had gotten
us—a land of plenty with one

too many singing bowls

sounding off, as if their brass
had been warped from too much

pounding. There there. Slow it

down, the Old Man said, don’t be
afraid to feel the thing ring out—

it’s not like it’s going to kill you.

Timothy Liu’s latest books of poems are Down Low and Lowdown and Luminous Debris.

"Stir the Waters" painting by JoAnneh Nagler

By Patricia Davis

His neighbors, even their children, sitting
in the warmth of afternoon, giggled
	     no, guffawed at the monstrosity that rose up
in his yard. Room after room,
stall after stall. What have you
built, Noah?
	     What did it cost?

When the floodwaters drained
there was nothing
	     but the dead and an odor
that made Noah tremble.
Noah waited for the earth

to harden—waited until the animals
could step out on the ground
	     without sinking.