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."