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Some pronounce it poim.
Like it has an oy inside it.
The way an oyster
has an oy inside it.
– from “Poem” by Paul Hostovsky

When Branko heard the trucks rumble past the apartment building, he was stealing the transistor radio his elderly mother kept by her bed. He stuck the small radio in his pocket, then stumbled through the hallway to the living room. From the second-floor window he could see the old women climbing down from the flatbeds. The women sat on little wooden stools and guarded the soiled sofas and mattresses and broken refrigerators set out on the sidewalk. Their hands clutched net bags stuffed with loaves of bread and hard fruit. Branko despised Zagreb’s annual collection day and the Gypsies it brought.
– from “Whole Body Warm” by Christopher Linforth

My night vision is pixelating—
myriad luminous motes
escape heaven, delicately drift

whitening these flat fields,
this stopped pond—round like
a communion wafer you could skate on.
– from “ICEBLINK” by Susanna Brougham

Far out in the middle of the Lake, maybe halfway to Canada, to Thessalon, the wind blows the waves even higher than it does out over the open sea. Their tops of froth bend into whitened crystal in the frozen air, then crash like glass, thousands of broken windows falling into the unrisen water.
– from “Ophelia” by Richard Wirick

Everyone knows the boulder,
the torture of eternal, pointless pushing,
then the inevitable downhill roll.
Few remember the reason – Death
tricked, fifty extra years to savor
olive bread beneath the Tuscan sun,
fifty cakes whose flames
were his to snuff.
– from “Sisyphus” by Alison Stone

She thinks of saying “Don’t get the frozen pizza,” but that would reveal that she’d had the frozen pizza once or twice or more, that desperate choice of lonely people. “Oh,” she stalls for time, “they have some fresh arugula here, for a change.” She immediately regrets saying that, but oh well, too late. What if he’s an arugula-freak and wants to discuss that strange stuff she’s never tasted? So much for trying to sound sophisticated.
– from “Super Deal” by Terence Kuch

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