A BLESSING IN DISGUISE - John Ashbery
- "And right. The great spruces loom. I am yours to die with, to desire."
ANTICIPATED STRANGER - John Ashbery
- "the bruise will stop by later."
BOURBON WITH PETRARCH - Wendy Battin
- "And if you're gone, I'm not. The love goes on."
COOL DUST - Aaron Shurin
- "This is not my house, my ghost, my uninvited guest, my lost labor of love..."
FROM "MELISMAS" - Marlon Hacla
- "My love leans closely to place her lips next to my ear (and now I am molten brass, alley engulfed by rhododendrons, smoke restless while floating..."
GHOSTS (HOMAGE TO BURIAL) - EMILY BERRY
- "I just want to be a symbol you alone could hear."
GROUSE - Sandra McPherson
- "Bottomland--the foolhen waits there for the fool gun, gray throat-down free in a burst, the pose, the afterslump."
IF WE HAD KNOWN - MARISSA DAVIS
- "first beauty, fugitive, then the pines [...] to dark & water..."
MY SAD SELF - Allen Ginsberg
- "tenderness flowing thru the buildings, my fingertips touching reality's face..."
SLEEPING ON DOORS - Steven Orlen
- "To each ghost we assign lamentations..."
SNOW AND DIRTY RAIN - Richard Siken
- "Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night..."
THE LAWS OF MOTION - Nikki Giovanni
- "and my eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant lover..."
TO BE WORN OPENLY AT THE WRIST, OR AT THE CHEST AND HIDDEN - Carl Phillips
- "What’s history anyway, except—according to the latest mouth saying so—just what happened: I flourished undramatically, to no apparent purpose, like pretty much everyone. The sea dragged the shore; the shore suffered the sea."
TO THE GARBAGE COLLECTORS IN BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA, THE FIRST PICKUP OF THE NEW YEAR - Philip Appleman
- "Halfway back to dream, I speculate..."
TOMB OF BAUDELAIRE - Michael Palmer
- "...which contains its own opposite like the end of a bridge."
YOUR SHADOW INVENTS YOU EVERY TIME LIGHT FAILS TO PASS THROUGH YOU - Michael Wasson
- "Here's my body & you stretching lifelong... Don't be afraid. Touch me here, where, some days, it hurts."