MIDTERMS

by Adin Thayer

The heft
of the planet’s
turbulence
the severing
nation
burst
into wails
 
there were
leaves 
falling 
everywhere
raining 
free gold  and 
          apricot
littering the path
with the bright
carved shapes
of renewal
 
and why   why
can not 
this world 
itself
lead
us errant 
citizens
down this 
path  where
mingled
leaves of maple 
oak and ash 
together 
anonymously
mix the trees’
spring supply
of delicious 
dirt
 
this path
not
the other

  
Adin Thayer has worked in a variety of roles, as a psychotherapist, a teacher at the Smith College School for Social Work, and a peacebuilding facilitator in several African countries. In addition to what she draws from these sources, her work engages her childhood growing up in Virginia when it was a legally segregated state. Her poems address how the lawfulness and beauty of the natural world provides sustenance in the face of human struggle. One of five sisters and the mother of two daughters, she lives in Massachusetts. She published a volume of poetry, The Close World, in 2020.

MULCHING LEAVES

by John Minczeski 

It’s an asterisk in the middle of the day; 

it’s the dust filtering through the mower’s bag, 
the shimmer I wade through that collects 
on my jeans, in my lungs; it’s me piling 
the partially digested leaves on raised beds, 
next July’s harvest a universe away.  
I want to say grass storm and 
rain delay over red maple leaves 
like a priest giving benedictions.  
Every day it’s the coming elections.  
Ads warn of the worst. I’ve come to  
expect the worst. It’s the mower  
spitting leaves into the bag, 
leaving a widening strip of green.  
Such a solemn inhalation, this dust.  
Incense, and a threat of silence.  

John Minczeski is the author of "A Letter to Serafin" and other collections. Poems have appeared in The New Verse News, One Art, Tampa Review, Harvard Review, and The Saint Paul Almanac. Minczeski, who lives in St. Paul, has taught in poets in the schools, at The Loft Literary Center, and at various colleges around the Twin Cities.