Baruch November: The Fountain of Light and Forgiveness
Must we mourn ourselves
before our passing?
Audio: Mary Oliver reads “Wild Geese”
Mary Oliver reads “Wild Geese” for Seattle Arts & Lectures’ 2007/08 Season at Benaroya Hall on February 4, 2008.
Elsa Gidlow: Constancy
My sister, I keep faith with love, not lovers.
Bruce Lowry: Just Long Enough
My desire is only this—to die someplace the earth made beautiful all on its own, the way a first-grader makes the morning glory out of construction paper and Elmer’s glue, … Continue reading
Kari Gunter-Seymour: An Appalachian Woman’s Guide to Beer Drinking
Drink to the twisted torch of freedom, washed down
with fracking waste, red clay dust, the bitter soot
of coal’s see ya later sucka!
Jason Irwin: Afterwards
One a.m., the two of us holding hands, naked
in bed, in a second-floor room in Galway.
Dawn Potter: The Unicorn Is in Captivity and No Longer Dead
Which do I like better, someone asks, fork or spoon?
And I reply, That’s not a question for Thursday.
Ask me instead how I lost my virginity,
Lasse Söderberg: For Tomas Tranströmer
You know the broken history of things,
the alchemy of stones, a world masked
in the blind light of God.
Michael Simms: Portrait of Unknown Couple
He sketched in charcoal
the arch of a shoulder
the movement of a hand
the woman’s head
turned and tilted slightly
toward the man
Video: Cast Out with Love
The Poetic Reconstruction of a Cornish Gansey, from Sheep to Sea.
Robert Frost: Provide, Provide
The witch that came (the withered hag)
To wash the steps with pail and rag
Was once the beauty Abishag,
The picture pride of Hollywood.
Richard Levine: More Light
At any moment, that heron might
slowly unfold its miracle
of flight, and stir the hypnotic tide
of quiet surrounding us
Michelle Bitting: The Great Fire
When plague grips a grand city in its pitch and airless
fist, flames bore holes in flesh that the rats sing
sweetly through.
Edward Harkness: My Father Meets Margaret Bourke-White 
He finds a Hershey bar
in his breast pocket, offers her a piece.
She flicks her cigarette into the dark,
takes the chocolate and says, Thanks, kiddo.
