death
Death series, part four: Dress rehearsal
Vanishing by Lawrence Raab First you worry that you’ll never get what you want, later that you’ll lose what you have. In between for a time you just trusted the course of your life, assumed things would fall into place. Most of them did. But now, not quite all of a sudden, every […]
MoreDeath series part three: Seek and ye shall not find
Miguel by César Vallejo I’m sitting here on the old patio beside your absence. It is a black well. We’d be playing, now. . . I can hear Mama yell “Boys! Calm down!” We’d laugh, and off I’d go to hide where you’d never look. . . under the stairs, in the hall, […]
MoreDeath series, part two: Sticks and stones, breaking bones
Stick Elegy by Terrance Hayes The dead were still singing Turn the lights down low Beneath Yellow Bridge where years before, clowning And ass out, Stick jumped with nothing but the State Championship trophy in his righteous clutch. The water Was supposed to be deepest there, and for three seasons Straight MVPs: Charlie […]
MoreDeath series, part one: Once more to the lake, with cheeseburgers
Today begins a death series. If you are of the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness tribe, the timing might feel off to you. It’s true, poems about death would be better suited to November, somber November with its All Souls Day, bare trees and sunless skies. But I’ve always been a Margaret are you grieving […]
MoreMirror, mirror on the wall, who is the saddest of them all
Mirror by Sylvia Plath I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It […]
MoreA bug by any other name
Dan’s Bugs by Jim Harrison I felt a little bad about the nasty earwig that drowned in my nighttime glass of water, lying prone at the bottom like a shipwrecked mariner. There was guilt about the moth who died when she showered with me, possibly a female. They communicate through wing vibrations. I was careful […]
More