Diane di Prima: To My Father
In my dreams you stand among roses.
You are still the fine gardener you were.
You worry about mother.
You are still the fierce wind, the intolerable force
that almost broke me.
Robert Cording: Dome Houses
When erected, the domes must have looked
like something built to colonize Mars.
Video: The F-Word
A dad struggles to give an age-appropriate explanation of the expletive.
Donna Spruijt-Metz: Person
I wouldn’t call you back—not
to a body that would be unable
to walk the mountains freely. Even though I miss you—
even though the hole you left in me is vast—please—
trust me.
Jan Beatty: My Father’s Houses
My father stands lean and young
in the formica kitchen, drinking a shot of Imperial.
He shoots his head back/swallows it all/
slams down the shot glass/turns around and says:
That’s good stuff.
Michael Simms: Jude the Obscure, Forgiveness
I wish Lea could see this light
lowering itself gently into the arms
of the Aphrodite sweet shrub
and tangling itself in the thorns
of Jude the Obscure named for
the many petals of our sins against others.
Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across
Yesterday, I was culling through papers to throw out and came across a letter from my mother to her father. She’s trying to cushion the news that no one will tell him. He’s dying of cancer.
Ma Yongbo: Father’s Little Boat (English and Chinese)
She sits beside him all night,
watching the Father’s darkness,
listening to the careful breath of the dark,
listening to the broken winds of another world.
Meg Kearney (Two Poems)
When he was dying my little brother
said cancer was “the sins of our mother”
visited upon him. What’s also true:
her heart was the stone rolled away from the tomb.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: About My Birthday
when the last leaves let go, let go,
have all let go, & it’s almost winter again —
don’t remember my birthday
Video: White Grass
In Mongolia, 10 year old Munkhjargal dreams of following in her father’s footsteps as a horse trainer. Unfortunately, her entire way of life is threatened by an increasingly common phenomenon … Continue reading
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: Week One
She is fine like a ringlet of fiddlehead fern
before it unfurls in the summer forest
William Wenthe: Prophecy
In the predawn of Monday, I woke, dream-heavy
with a feeling of fate—like memory, but more
like remembering forward
Kathryn Levy: Three Poems
The geese are calling—this is
time to depart. They gather and sink and
soar toward somewhere.
