I’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 […]
MoreI’m a lacksadaisical tweeter. A now-and-then and if-the-mood-strikes-me user of social media. Which is why I only have 65 followers. That’s ten less people than I follow myself. This post isn’t a plug for my twitter feed (I tried that here before and it didn’t help). It’s an announcement that I’m going to start posting some […]
MoreCome. And Be My Baby by Maya Angelou The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn Some people wrap their lies around a cocktail glass And you sit wondering where you’re going to turn I got it. Come. And be my baby. Some prophets […]
MoreEquinox 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, […]
MoreToday is National Poetry Day, and I feel like I’ve been caught without my school project completed. I’m stalling in the hallway, scribbling out enough verbiage to meet the word count, hoping I don’t get asked to read it out loud. I got nothing prepared, folks. But as it happens, I visited Artprize […]
MoreA Note to the Alien on Earth by Miller Williams Here, in the interest of time, some words to work with, assuming you’re pretending to be a man or woman and understand English. If this should find you, know that I’m glad to help any way I can. A letter beginning “Dear Friend” […]
MoreBriefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks by Jane Kenyon I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper…. When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside […]
MoreIn a Room With Five People, Six Griefs by Jane Hirshfield In a room with five people, six griefs. Some you will hear of, some not. Let the room hold them, their fears, their anger. Let there be walls and windows, a ceiling. A door through which time changer of everything can enter. […]
MoreThe Same Inside by Anna Swir Walking to your place for a love feast I saw at a street corner an old beggar woman. I took her hand, kissed her delicate cheek, we talked, she was the same inside as I am, from the same kind, I sensed this instantly as a dog […]
More