Late Hours by Lisel Mueller On summer nights the world moves within earshot on the interstate with its swish and growl, an occasional siren that sends chills through us. Sometimes, on clear, still nights, voices float into our bedroom, lunar and fragmented, as if the sky had let them go long before our […]
MoreSong of the Heart by Cavafy With you, I think, all that is pleasant smiles on me, in the mirror of your eyes there is reflected joy. Stay, my light, and still I have not told you even half of all that presses down upon my heart so amorous, that rushes to my […]
MoreAlzheimer’s: The Wife by C.K. Williams She answers the bothersome telephone, takes the message, forgets the message, forgets who called. One of their daughters, her husband guesses: the one with the dogs, the babies, the boy Jed? Yes, perhaps, but how tell which, how tell anything when all the name tags have been […]
MoreI’m thinking about Miss Emily Litella today. For those too young to remember the Saturday Night Live character created by Gilda Radner, Emily Litella was a commentator on Weekend Update back when Jane Curtain anchored. Miss Litella was a daffy little lady with a high voice and a hearing impairment. She was invited on the […]
MoreMarriage By Lawrence Raab Years later they find themselves talking about chances, moments when their lives might have swerved off for the smallest reason. What if I hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning? What if you’d been out, as you were when I tried three times the night before? Then she tells […]
MoreLove Poem With Toast by Miller Williams Some of what we do, we do to make things happen, the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc, the car to start. The rest of what we do, we do trying to keep something from doing something, the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting, […]
MoreI was just at the post office mailing my Valentine’s Day cards, and there I met the friendliest woman on the planet. In five minutes’ conversation we covered the Pope’s resignation, all the Charlie Brown characters we could remember, her favorite candies, recent films we’ve seen, and who she’s sending Valentine cards to. After a […]
MoreI won’t attempt to transcribe this shape poem. WordPress would make a mess of the spacing, and instead of beards, the poem would look like a string of pennant flags. Beards have been in the news lately, and not just in “News of the Weird” columns where beard stories presumably land—these beard […]
MoreMy nephew got married a few weeks ago in a joyful rumpus of a wedding followed by a mellower brunch the next day. I waited till the last minute to poem-elf the couple, and then I was disappointed I couldn’t get in their locked car to hide poems. But it worked out. In the absence […]
MoreMy niece and goddaughter got married last weekend in Maryland. It was a great occasion to celebrate with my family (70 and counting), and a great occasion for poem elfing. There’s no poem hidden in this picture but I do think I captured one in her expression. Look how she grips her father […]
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