Edna St. Vincent Millay: ‘She had a horror he would die at night’
She had a horror he would die at night.
And sometimes when the light began to fade
She could not keep from noticing how white
The birches looked and then she would be afraid
Adam Patric Miller: Passing Through The Intersection
It made no sense to see him. He wore the leather coat he used to wear, an 8-ball on the back. Maybe this happens when you don’t acknowledge death.
Meg Pokrass: Three Poems
When I said, I miss America
I meant that what is nestled in my brain feels like a harbor.
Byron Hoot: On That Day
In a few days, it will be the anniversary
of my father’s death and I will have
to see if grief visits or stays away.
Dawn Potter: Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know What Love Is
I think back to those nights in Buck Lane, the melodramas of sex and desire, the intense affections but also the cruelties … the ruthlessness of self-absorption.
Linda Belans: The mirror doesn’t lie
Do I look fat
in this outrage?
puffed up?
Stephen Dobyns: Prague
The day I learned my wife was dying
I told myself if anyone said, Well, she had
a good life, I’d punch him in the nose.
How much life represents a good life?
Sean Sexton: Plea
An evening has passed, and a young cow is still
crying among the herd this morning like the widow
in the Bible who wouldn’t leave an ill-tempered
judge alone.
Chard deNiord: On Such An Evening
everything just gets sweeter as I sit under
the maple after working all day in the garden
and listen to the music of silence disguised
as birdsong and breeze in the overstory
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Doors Where I Have Knocked
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Petition for this Day
May my modest routines appease me today, I who
raged against them for so long —
Sandy Solomon: Widow
Now the mockingbird at the mulberry
and its mate on the fence pretend they’re crows
and their caws contend with the noise in my bones
Video: Goodnight, Moon
Stephen Gailule wants closure. After hijacking his father’s ashes, he makes a suburban pilgrimage, trespassing onto the grounds of his childhood home. Things change when the new tenant takes a … Continue reading
Ron Koertge: An Old Farmer
still has a few cows and goats he helped into this world, then fed with a bottle. They follow him everywhere, eyes rolled up in adoration.
