Poet Tree Town

by Rebecca G. Biber

When I was a college student I sublet a room in this ground-floor
apartment we’re passing now. Generations past the word coed,
but they still called us girls, so did we. It’s a two-story brick cube,
four units up and down. The doors remain that institutional blue.
Every night, strangers’ footsteps above me, the stereotype
of upstairs neighbors: why so much walking back and forth?
As if dragging chains. All night, sirens, for Ingalls Street

by a collective of voices at Ypsi Juneteenth 2026

I am the wind
I yearn for peace and prosperity for everyone
I grieve the lives lost to racism & police brutality
I build a space for life of all kinds
I embrace the hands of all who reach out with love

by Brian L. Jacobs 

bomb peonies
ensconced in the guard rings

mouthbrooding arbs 
tongue’d in bacchus incubation

by Molly Pershin Raynor

I am writing this in the courtyard in Kerrytown,
On the last hot day of the year,
Under a fat full moon
Pulling ribbons of blood from me,

by Shweta Hegde

For my daughter Meera

Yesterday we received a kindness,
Sweeter because unexpected.
The delight on my child’s face,

by Summer Stratton 

i remember having milky tea 
over the entire universe
condensed onto Main Street,
night sinking her gentle fingers
into low-hanging clouds
wringing cool rain to rinse me
of my necrotic baby-fat,

by Keaka Cagle

Oh oak of Mushroom Park
The oldest person I ever knew
Wrapping my arms around you
Before I had ever grew
You were the strongest and stark
Of oak of Mushroom Park

by Shannon Rae Daniels

after Robert Hayden’s “October”

Even weighed down
by ice the dogs ran in
as my mom shut
the steel door behind them,
and covered them in towels.
She dried them
paw by paw.

by Ryan McCarty

The Normal Park discussion group
never posts about dreams
but last night, it imagined itself
as a handful of fingers, all wrapped

by Ellen Stone

For Ann Arbor and the Huron River

Blue rain over the wet street, sponging the soccer field. Rain of endlessness, the
way another river takes me home. This one neat and tidy against moss-matted
grass, sidewalk squares where too many geese say it’s easier to make do in a 
college town where kids still toss them crusts and all the adults are activists for this
or that. Because a river holds everything we need and most of what we don’t. Rivers
collect, yet the water’s never stagnant. A container, but the water’s never still.

by Corv

bring big bags of masa to your abuelita’s house. help her cook. help her walk. help her clean. hold space for her concerns. let her tell you an old story- one you’ve heard a million times.

by Adrian Kocinski

The last sighs of winter
Wake the honeysuckle flower
A subliminal alarm coursing
Messages        of awakening
Whispers from root to root
The gentle Earth stirring

by Audra Eddy

Tell me, dear Tree,
dear Elm Tree, specifically,
tell me, please,
how to be
in this world

by Onna Solomon

I watch the trees bow to it
At the edge
of the covered porch
I listen to its din
take over pour over
rooftops flooding

by Desiraé Simmons

When artificial intelligence takes over,
and is programmed to remember all
that we must forget
in order to break our bonds,
Of the before and after
Of the below and above,
will it accurately remember
What a Black Body is?

by Ciatta Tucker

i want to keep remembering the sight of fresh pink paint on white walls
having my room painted for the first time, my first sense of belonging
the move to our first house, the beginning of our salvation.
before then, we were 5

by A. Shaikh

I wasn’t looking for love, like a hosta growing 
unguarded in the neighbor’s yard. I just craved belief. 
I moved here for the poem, never expecting to stick 
around for the song. So I drank the mirage

by Petra Kuppers

At night, the Ford Lake Dam still hums.

Old Hydro buzzes in his sleep, jumps shivers down deformed bullhead catfish
spines.

Deep beneath, the Sauk Indian Trail remembers soles that anchored river to the
land—tramp, climb, traverse—footprints chime from fort to village, trade post,
friend.

by Robin Lily Goldberg

new roots
begin in fields of fresh berries,
speckled with seasonal pumpkins

blue brick roads lead to aerial silks
             filled with Pacific significance

by Leigh Sugar

Ann Arbor, 1999

After sweaty September soccer practice, only a cone from Sweet Memories —
Blue Moon — will do. It’s kind of like bubblegum mixed with
cotton candy. Maybe cotton candy flavored bubblegum? I never
don’t get sprinkles. You need the sprinkles. Anyways, who
else goes to Borders just to look at the CD covers? Vitamin C is so
famous right now for that song about moving on. It’s called