The car shakes. Rocks dot the road like appointments.

Throughout life we have mossy wings, but no choice of the branch...

You were the gentle one. The one we could always count on, go to, and trust. But now we say that we did not know of the suffering...

What people say when you’re not around, parading their overturned trees like candles in hand, sparkle explosions

I painted still lifes-- peonies and roses, until a romance blossomed, and I stepped into that ring of marriage when I stopped

By Dawn Bratton Dawn Bratton lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she writes poetry and prose orbiting the image of eyes and theme of perception. During 2021 - 2023 she served as secretary and vice president on the board of directors for WordSwell ( wordswelljournal.org ). In 2023, she co-founded Moon Blossom Collective, an arts and wellbeing collective ( moonblossomcollective.org ). In 2025 she founded Karma for supporting the literary and arts communities ( karmafinan

Wild creatures flash stiletto hooves through the forest, glossy wings catch indigo light as night falls. At a dinner party submerged in leaves,

To stand barefoot upon the stoop takes nerve, When winter paints the land in frigid white.

Down by the lake, fireworks disturb the night, The bursts recall the bombs in desert lands;

I hear my children laughing in the garden, gazing at the moon, though years have faded away and only I remain here gazing at the moon.

It was a love come undone, no more heart cards in red. She would need to explain, fold story in a neat box.

By the time I was back the fruit was ready unflappably blue through cool pepper sheets

One morning the girl wakes and it is not today. It is fifty-three years ago, and the girl is in a looming house on Willow Street,

I lifted the lid on the tub of Land O Lakes and found, once again, black/brown/golden crumbs...

He loses himself in the river that sends a boy down the rapids that make a man,

I have had the same dream every night for a month. Those dry, rib-like dreams, unsoaked, cling to me in the bathroom,

We were poets, painters, always, in spite

It is no secret, sidewalk-strider, that all are not aligned, like you,

It’s Saturday morning. Mario Palmeri’s going to lose his lid. I mean, he’s heading down to Tony’s Barbershop on College Street and getting a trim because he’s starting to look like a Sicilian Harpo Marx.

We’re 18 and 20, unbound, unfettered, gilded cages in the distance a mere mirage,