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• Free Range  By Annalise Lozier

  After the second time they took you
  from me, Lydia, I went into the attic and drove nails
  upward through the roof

  to keep the vultures from roosting. But when you returned
  to me as the sheen of light on an egg yolk, you asked
  that I forgive what they’d done, so I went back

  into the attic and pulled the nails out again.
  After the apple was picked, you said, the crooked branch
  it had grown from—with bark

  the color of charcoal—was cut down, and a scavenger
  made from it, to reclaim all matter to God.

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• Lunch Break  By Anna Sudderth

  A man in a suit paces by the Charles
  in the summer. The water slower
  than usual, lower in its bed. His face

  has the vague look of a person walking fast
  in no particular direction. Pausing,
  the man looks down at the bank, and finds
  the body of a drowned crow

  in the river’s shallows, slick and dark
  like a fresh heart. He looks up;
  on the opposite bank, the generous leaves

  of an oak tree wave in the sun,
  offering some courtesy, or at least

  the man receives it as such.

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• Ascension  By Daniella Cohen

  Later you’ll walk onto my porch
  In morning and wear
  Your prayer shawl,
  Sway across the pool scape
  Like a man drowning in his own
  Heart. I don’t know
  How that feels anymore,
  Lips parting to gulp invisible
  Mist but you feel it
  Somewhere along
  Your clavicle. I have no
  Fringed coat to hold while I pray
  No sense of wonder
  While I pray, only when I peek
  Through the window screen
  And see how the sun
  Moves you.

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