Meeting the Light Completely by Jane Hirshfield Even the long-beloved was once an unrecognized stranger. Just so, the chipped lip of a blue-glazed cup, blown field of a yellow curtain, might also, flooding and falling, ruin your heart. A table painted with roses. An empty clothesline. Each time, the […]
MoreToday I read an article in the latest Rolling Stone about roaming packs of wild dogs in Detroit. With little money for animal control and deserted buildings, empty lots, and a declining human population, Detroit is being overrun with stray dogs. (You can link to the article here.) The writer visits one abandoned home filled […]
MoreI don’t often have the chance to monitor my poem-elfings once they’re up. I do wonder what happens to the poems I’ve left behind, but I don’t pursue my curiosity. It’s the fate of former boyfriends in the pre-Facebook age. They may have grown bald, fat and alcoholic, but we used to be […]
MoreInterim by Ruth Stone Like the radiator that sits in the kitchen passing gas; like the mop with its head on the floor, weeping; or the poinsettia that pretends its leaves are flowers; the cheap paint peels off the steamed walls. When you have nothing to say, the sadness of things speaks for […]
MorePoem by Thomas McGrath How could I have come so far? (And always on such dark trails?) I must have traveled by the light Shining from the faces of all those I have loved. If I were skilled in the art of micrographia, I would copy this poem on vellum in […]
MoreInvisible in the Torn Out Interiors by Dara Wier A man looked at us across his little dish Of watercress and peas and said he’d wasted Five years. We couldn’t ask him doing what? He said he knew he’d let some thing alive die And didn’t know how to get it […]
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