To my seventeen-year-old brother

--by Judy Leserman

You twist my innards, the way you toddle

about the world, all seventy-five inches of you.

You’ve got a siren-alarm heart, in bungling search 

for that hat you were meant to wear, with your fingers

pulling after it like they used to pull china-bearing table cloths.

I don’t mind, it’s just that you wouldn't have me catch

those pieces that can crash, the ones that could be heirlooms,

the ones that no amount of glue could salvage.

In you is a boy who runs, hands-over-head,
open-palmed into outstretched arms.
No one told you that you are made of porcelain.

When the brunt of burgeoning manhood bores
that boy, through and through,
I will hold myself a car-key-dangle away,
I will place a razor-trim trail back to me.

Created for Stern's Poetry Blog!

— Professor Miller (@CivilizedYawp) April 17, 2018

I Cry When I See Men on the Fields

by Shoshy Ciment


What is it about high school

football players
Dressed in second skins and
rain soaked masks
Living our pastimes like
unpaid mercenaries
Content to bleed
on newly cut grass


if it means they’ve got a chance at fame. No, a chance at relevance. War is much nicer to our boys than organized sports. At least in the trenches they wear their dreams without shame. They can cry because death is so much bigger than a loss to Avery High School. And I can cry for them because they fought for a


grand old flag
a high flying flag
waving with the
frailty of a dying man
Edges tattered like
Hand-me-down fatigues
Those stars and stripes
never looked so
cruel


as they did the day you came home, wrapped in mahogany and sealed in primer. We all wept because you had lost. And it was okay. It was noble. All fields hold dying dreams of crying men but some dreams are more heroic than others and high school trophies and touchdowns are not. When I lowered you into the ground, I wondered if


the grass still held
the memory of you before
you left
Could it still taste your
teenage blood
that stained the fields with
simple dreams of
simple victories