Toi Derricotte: Not Forgotten
I love the way the black ants use their dead.
They carry them off like warriors on their steel
backs.
Sandy Solomon: Grief
I move back and forth
down the supermarket aisles,
the way I move back and forth
through grief’s famous stages.
David Adès: Our Griefs
When they were little and not yet anguish
we nurtured our griefs,
we coddled them,
said there, there, things will get better.
Valerie Bacharach: Crows
Some days I don’t know what to do with this rage I carry.
Darnell Arnoult: Widowhood & New Life
Peer passed vibrant stalks of rain. Think of his absent face
now uncaught by earth, light among stars. The man
is now stardust. His voice like the riddle of dreams.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Acceptance
Today grief is a long steady rain
Fred Johnston: Ark
She leaned in, my mother, and felt the sleeve
First, then the shoulders, but she left it on its hanger in its own dark
Closed the door as if it were a sacred ark of rules the light might wither
Something I knew she would look at and leave
Betsy Sholl: The Word ‘Swan’ on a Slip of Paper Fell from my Pocket
The wind that morning was deliciously wild—
one second the water rippled like black pleats,
the next it was all gust-driven glitter
blowing the ticket right out of my hand
for the swans to trample like a shed feather
Margo Berdeshevsky: God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own
He says — you will let go he will let go the branch when he is
Ready I nod, yes, he says, climbing the hill from the sea
Where he has gone to wash distance and salt before it comes
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Widow’s Bedroom
Light puddles over the old floor planks, then climbs
the wall behind his place in our bed, & glows there.
Past noon, slow shadows douse that light & push it
out of the room. As if they knew he won’t come back.
Dawn Potter: The Way We Live Now
a man solitary as a grieving
arrow types
a text to his daughter and
the text feathers into the ether
Laurence Musgrove: Surely
wondering what we’d
have to do, to leave behind,
to lose, to grieve without stopping
Mandy Fessenden-Brauer: Funeral in Gaza
I’d been in Gaza only a few days when I attended a funeral with my husband who was working with UNRWA. Outside the wake house, soldiers were revving up their … Continue reading
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: This Longing for Him
Another dawn. Fists in my pockets, I head east
into this street of bungalows
as if I belonged here, among the hundred windows
lit one by one
