Entry

"Creak creak, the hinges need oil.
     Creak creak,
my heart swings open with praise for losers we are
      and those we’re not
by grace of a thousand fancy chances..."

From "In the Kingdom of Perpetual Repair" by Kevin Stein

Sweeps

"...at least
elsewhere those able for holiness—
its signs and rigors—are at work."

From "Linoleum" by Tess Gallagher

Meters

"...ironic in their outcast
dignity—as though, like some pine chests,

they might be prized in disuse..."

From "American Solitude" by Grace Schulman

Golf

"...Sidney
and Dizzy, Uncle Ben and Papa Yancey, are
over by Sylvester's Grot making the sweetest,
cheerfulest blues you ever heard. The air,
so called, is full of it. Poems are fluttering
everywhere like seed from a cottonwood tree."

From "The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill" by Hayden Carruth

Embedded

"...we might coax you with pebbles
kept warm in the hand
or coins or the relics
of vanished animals..."

From "To Luck" by W. S. Merwin

Buona fortuna

"...the stables
where horseshoes hold

not just luck, but
beyond."

From "Book of Hours" by Kevin Young

Lactuca

"...within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me."

From "In Jerusalem" by Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Fady Joudah