Chard deNiord: Tree of Wisdom
I am taken in by its stand and breadth,
marveling at its brawn and reach of branches,
studying each leaf like the page of a sacred book,
embracing its trunk like a void.
Sydney Lea: A Monk After Dark
One boot sags like him in his cubicle’s corner.
He drops the other to the floor with a grimace.
David Kirby: My Girlfriend Killed James Brown
“Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw who
my seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend,
and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three
weeks later, James Brown is dead.”
David Hassler: Intensive Care
Children under the age of fourteen weren’t allowed in the ICU. I was eleven, and my brother was thirteen, but no nurse or doctor was going to stop us from seeing our mother.
Robert Wrigley: Self-Pity
Sometimes, in private—another room at least,
another building all the better—you can bask
in the balm and rage of it, you can as a dog does
roll in it like a dead fish on the grass
Video: The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai
A rare glimpse inside a samurai sword workshop, where ritual meets mastery
Molly Fisk: Death, Herself
UNDRESS, SHE SAID by Doug Anderson, Four Way Books, Tribeca 2022, 102 pages, $17.95 . . You might think, opening Doug Anderson’s fourth poetry collection Undress, She Said, that a man … Continue reading
Nneka M. Okona: The Imposition of Black Grief
For Black people in the United States, grief and loss are intertwined with our very being. Our ancestors knew the trauma of loss intimately…
Carolyn Miller: Rapture
When they said the world was coming to an end,
I thought about my brother, his long limbs,
his good shoulders and thick hair, his small
white teeth, his beautiful feet at the end
of the hospital bed.
Video: Vegan Poem
At the current turning point in our relationship with the earth, Federico García Lorca’s vision of the injustice in our mistreatment of animals is even more poignant.
Robinson Jeffers: The Treasure
That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it;
interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence
Video: Robert Wrigley reads ‘American Fear’
In this long poem about the present disfunction of American society, Robert Wrigley ‘tells all the truth, but makes it sing.’
Jonathan Kaplan: Why is a love poem full of sex in the Bible? Readers have been struggling with the Song of Songs for 2,000 years
Feminist readings have highlighted the female character’s power, autonomy and sensuality. Conservative Christians, meanwhile, often approach the poem as an ideal expression of acceptable love between a husband and wife.
Song of Songs, Canticles 1-8
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys[….]
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Vox Populi 