Alison Luterman
Alison Luterman is busy practicing descending minor thirds, going to qigong, and teaching creative-writing classes. She lives in Oakland, California, where there’s a taco truck at the foot of her street.
Needs
I need a hug from you, from behind, as I’m standing at the kitchen window, washing dishes and looking at the one pink-flowering branch left on the peach tree.
August 2015Morning Song
Morning: fire of purple princess blossoms, / toddler pedaling furiously on a tricycle, / and the man unlocking his fix-it shop on the corner / with its hand-painted warning sign: / ALL MY STUFF IS NOT WORTH YOUR LIFE.
May 2015The Empty Dress
March sky the color of smoke; / Carla’s red hair blazed, a torch song of hopeless hope / as she powered her wheelchair through the Vintage Fair / to help me find a wedding dress.
September 2014The Witnesses
I could hear the Jehovah’s Witnesses before I saw them, / two black women dressed in black, / conferring politely on my porch steps. / I ran to the door to head them off.
July 2014Old Paint
Sometimes he seems strange to me. I notice that his hair is thinning in front, that it poufs up a little, which makes him look like an aging cowboy.
April 2013Because These Failures Are My Job
This morning I failed to notice the pearl-gray moment / just before sunrise when everything lightens
June 2012Feral City
My husband, Lee, was the one who heard the abandoned kittens piping and squeaking like an off-key orchestra composed entirely of piccolos and penny whistles. They were hidden in the overgrown weeds of the front yard, and it was raining. There were six of them, looking like featherless baby birds.
May 2012White Lady Of Once A Week
The child lolls half-asleep in the front seat. / “Why do it start and then stop?” The rain, she means. / “The clouds are banging into each other,” I tell her, / which is what someone told me when I was her age, seven.
March 2012Citizens Of A Broken City
She’s shuffling around the lake in flip-flops, / pregnant belly hanging / over the open strings of her sweat pants, / and she’s shouting into her cellphone: / “You just don’t get it!”
February 2012Rocking Chair
I am nine years old, watching my mother nurse my new baby brother. She is sitting in the old rocker, humming a thin, sweet thread of a song.
January 2012
Has something we published moved you? Fired you up? Did we miss the mark? We’d love to hear about it.
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