EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD: Bringing some of my favorite previously-published poetry back to the front page.
by Maddie Solomon
i had a dream and in my dream the sacred were real.
they walked like ghosts among men.
this is the city of angels and the dark,
and the mosquitoes love our skin.
rain is a tantrum.
heat is a martyr for salvation.
i walk down sun-kissed streets.
your avenues are like arteries,
pulsing through veins of traffic lights and dissatisfaction.
most things are diagonal.
most things are perpendicular to the heart.
a monk prays at the foot of you.
his hands are cracked and dry.
prayer is a desert.
all are starved.
a woman waters her garden.
i want to ask: are these leaves precious to you?
are your hands deserving?
humidity exhausts and loves its own.
there is no room.
around us:
monuments look on in the sky.
gardens of sculptures pass mildly by
and children bathe in a fountain.
and this is true:
that your palms are empty.
your teeth are crooked.
a cavity is a cremation.
and this is true:
the spine of a city
does not straighten.
About the Poet
Maddie Solomon is a Politics major at Occidental college from Denver, CO. Her work has been published in The Denver Post, The Jewish Journal, Women’s Media Center, The Washington Examiner, The Algemeiner, Random Sample Literary Review, jGirls magazine, and her poems have been showcased on the RTD buses in Denver.
Vita Brevis Press. 
Excellent, lucid stuff! My “thoughts,” as you can see, are dripping with qualifiers. But not your poem. Your strong nouns and agile verbs carry nearly all the weight. Just how it oughta be, just how it oughta do. Great to see this piece reposted!