Let's Talk Over Smokes - Mike S.

let's talk about crossing
seas; let’s talk about lost

fire; let’s talk about smoke in the eyes—blink
to get it out; let’s talk about ones we knew,

fallen under wind and rain, wanderers
who endure pain

no longer; don’t shut
up yet; let’s talk about short

days, not the ones in summer;
let’s return to warm blankets of snow and stiff

cups of joe; I need a break
from August blackberry brambles, scavenged

by every bird;
let’s pause—

let winter
keep us.

Yellow Bowl - Rachel Contreni Flynn

If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft 
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums, 
if my body curves over the babies, 

and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.

Blue or Green - James Galvin

We don't belong to each other.  
We belong together.  
Some poems  
belong together to prove the intentionality of subatomic particles.  
Some poems eat with scissors.  
Some poems are like kissing a  
porcupine.  
God, by the way, is disappointed in some of your recent choices.  
Some poems swoop.  
When she said my eyes were  
definitely blue, I said, How can you see that in the dark?  
How can 
you not? she said, and that was like some poems. 
Some poems are  
blinded three times.  
Some poems go like death before dishonor. Some poems go like the time she brought cherries to the movies; 
later a heedless picnic in her bed.  
Never revered I crumbs so 
highly.  
Some poems have perfect posture, as if hanging by  
filaments from the sky.  
Those poems walk like dancers, 
noiselessly.  
All poems are love poems.
  Some poems are better off 
dead.  
Right now I want something I don't believe in.

Letter from the Editors

Dear Inklers,

A while back we promised a New Years poem, and we are aware that many of you are anxiously awaiting this post. We also are aware that it is quite a bit past New Years, so hold tight and someday soon we will have it for you. Until then, keep enjoying these awesome poems that we keep finding in the strangest of places.

Your dawdling co-editors,

Megan and Katy

How to Read a Poem: A Beginner's Manual - Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned,
that poetry is difficult,
that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,
with your high school equivalency diploma,
your steel-tipped boots,
or your white-collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:
the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage
enough to leap from the edge
and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,
humus rich and heavy from the garden.
Later it will become the fat tomatoes
and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,
language saying what is true,
doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun.

When you can name five poets
without including Bob Dylan,
when you exceed your quota
and don't even notice,
close this manual.

Congratulations.
You can now read poetry.

Burning the Old Year - Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.  

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,  

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,  

lists of vegetables, partial poems.  

Orange swirling flame of days,  

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,  

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.  

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,  

only the things I didn’t do  

crackle after the blazing dies