Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s the first day of National Poetry Month, a celebration most people observe by deleting Poem-a-Day emails. Today is also the most important secular holiday of the year: April Fool’s Day. And I am Marie of Romania, as Dorothy Parker would say. Actually I’m as serious as a person […]
MoreA break from poetry today to showcase a few lines from a brilliant novel. Decades before English writer Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize twice in four years (becoming the only woman to win the prize twice and the only writer to win it for a sequel), she wrote another historical novel, A Place […]
MoreYes, this is long. But you won’t regret taking a minute to read it. katherine with the lazy eye. short. and not a good poet. by Francine J. Harris this morning, i heard you were found in your mcdonald’s uniform. i heard it while i was visiting a lake town, where […]
MoreRosa By Rita Dove How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready. That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat. Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash. […]
MoreConfessions of a Recycled Shopping Bag by John Yau I used to be a plastic bottle I used to be scads of masticated wattle I used to be epic spittle, aka septic piddle I used to be a pleasant colleague I used to be a radiant ingredient I used to be a purple […]
MoreGames by Jack Gilbert Imagine if suffering were real. Imagine if those old people were afraid of death. What if the midget or the girl with one arm really felt pain? Imagine how impossible it would be to live if some people were alone and afraid all their lives. I […]
MoreDecember 2012, a friend turning fifty hosted a celebratory tea at an elegant hotel, and I misbehaved. I had no reason to be disagreeable—every element of the afternoon was to my liking. My friend is British (I’m a sucker for Brits), a woman with the effortless good manners I associate with her country and the […]
MoreAfter stuffing Christmas decorations in rubber bins and garbage bags, after consuming the last Christmas cookie crumb, after shelving the Christmas cards I know I won’t be sending, after putting away the thoughtful gifts I received, I am left with one gift that will never be used. Not for the usual reasons of fit or […]
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 […]
MoreCarrying On like a Crow by Charles Simic Are you authorised to speak For these trees without leaves? Are you able to explain What the wind intends to do With a man’s shirt and a woman’s nightgown Left on the laundry line? What do you know about dark clouds? Ponds full of fallen […]
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