A War
My great-grandmother gave all
her jewelry—cameo, rose gold
earrings, wedding ring—
and her silver candlesticks
to the old dairy farmer who agreed
to hide her in the ground, the opening
Kids
In my dream we are two best friends
Lying on our bellies reading comic books
strewn across your bedroom floor.
The sugar rush from the wad of Big League gum
we’re chewing is assurance that we’ll be up all night reading
The Fantastic Four, Captain America, and Superman
back when they were seventy-five cents.
We hang loose at your parents’ house
because my mother is afraid we’ll break something,
that we’ll track in dirt from playing outside.
From loose pages to issue 119 of our magazine, an anthology of over 100 HLP poets, over a decade of the Loose Award for translated works, the Founders prize for first book in its third year, and a bunch of great books in the works, we couldn’t have come this far without you.