Equinox by Elizabeth Alexander Now is the time of year when bees are wild and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants in the bright, late-September out-of-doors. I have found their dried husks in my clothes. They are dervishes because they are dying, one last sting, […]
MoreKitchen Song by Laura Kasischke The white bowls in the orderly cupboards filled with nothing. The sound of applause in running water. All those who’ve drowned in oceans, all who’ve drowned in pools, in ponds, the small family together in the car hit head on. The pantry full of lilies, […]
MoreThe great Irish poet Seamus Heaney has died, only 74 years old. Obituaries characterize him as a rock star among poets, and that was my experience of him, long before I had even read his poems. Years ago I went to hear him read at the University of Michigan with a dear friend. This […]
More“Girls’ weekend” and “death” really shouldn’t keep company, but a few weekends ago they did, and all things considered, it was nice. This November, for the first time in 23 years, my high school girlfriends gathered without our friend Christine, who died at the tail end of last year. The remaining eight of us weren’t […]
MoreRarely does my neighborhood offer peculiar sights. There’s a walker who charges down the street with ski poles in the middle of summer and a very tall cross-dresser I haven’t seen in years. During swim team season toilet paper hangs gracefully from trees, and in the spring girls in prom dresses duck into limousines. That’s […]
MoreA few days after Christmas, a dear friend from high school passed away after a 15-year battle with breast cancer. When I first met Christine freshman year, she was the prettiest girl I’d ever met and certainly the friendliest. Anyone sizing up the two of us—she blond and bubbly, me silent and awkward—would not have […]
MoreI may live on until I long for this time In which I am so unhappy, And remember it fondly. —Fujiwara No Kiyosuke Translated by Kenneth Rexroth I found this poem in a lovely little book of my father’s called 100 Poems from the Japanese. I have no idea why he bought […]
MoreRefusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets by Thomas Lynch It came to him that he could nearly count How many Octobers he had left to him In increments of ten or, say, eleven Thus: sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five. He couldn’t see himself at ninety-six— Humanity’s […]
Morelike so: This poem is very long and I’m unable to find a copy of it online (and unwilling to type it up myself), so my photographs will be the only version of the text available. Here goes: Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. A lot of the family commemorated the […]
MoreWrong Road So I said to the short order cook (because I think he owns the joint) what did Santa bring you: a fairly aggressive bit of humor, since I hardly know the man: my wife and I stop there occasionally on the way to Syracuse because it is so busy, the […]
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