DPF / Fearing

For magazines and dreams, from The Oxford Book of American Poetry, edited by David Lehman.

from X Minus X / by Kenneth Fearing

Still there will be your desire, and her desire, and his
                   desire, and their desire,
your laughter, their laughter

DPF / McPherson

For the bins and bins of them, from Poetryfoundation.org.

from A Pumpkin at New Year’s / by Sandra McPherson

It was time too to leave you uncut and full-featured,   
Like the grandpa of twenty-five pumpkins in my past

DPF / Gardinier

For collars and chambers, from Villanelles, edited by Annie Finch and Marie – Elizabeth Mali.

from Tonight / by Suzanne Gardinier, b. 1961

tomorrow, the defiant cavalcade.
Someone is writing a sermon tonight.

DPF / Ford

For fall, from poetryfoundation.org.

from In October 1914 (Antwerp) / by Ford Maddox Ford

L’Envoi 
And it was for this that they endured this gloom; 
This October like November, 
That August like a hundred thousand hours, 
And that September, 
A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days, 
And half October like a thousand years. . .

DPF / Kowit

For language, from Villanelles, edited by Annie Finch and Marie – Elizabeth Mali.

from The Grammar Lesson / by Steve Kowit

A noun’s a thing. A verb’s the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In “The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz,”

DPF / Burt

For basketball and yesterdays, from Villanelles, edited by Annie Finch and Marie -Elizabeth Mali.

from For Lindsay Whalen / by Stephen Burt, b. 1971

The shots you make surround you like a breeze.
When someone wins, then someone has to lose.

DPF / Tretheway

For journeys, from The Academy of American Poets at poets.org

from Theories of Time and Space / by Natasha Tretheway

        Bring only

what you must carry—tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph—who you were—
will be waiting when you return

DPF / Katz

For the season, from poetryfoundation.org.

from October / by Bobbi Katz

October is when jack-o’-lanterns
grin in the darkness
            and
            strange company crunches
across the rumple of dry leaves

DPF / Haymon

For October, fairytales and brothers, from poetryfoundation.org.

from The Witch Has Told You a Story / by Ava Leavell Haymon

He will lean toward the maw
of the oven as it opens

every afternoon, sighing
better and better smells.