Thomas McGuire: Grief Observed
A host of magpie kith and kin come
Back to tend and keen the fallen.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Stages of Grief
17 years since my son’s death, and still, each night when my husband drifts off, I watch movies, write, or read. Anything to stay awake.
Video: Do You Want To Go Down This Way, Or Go Back The Way We Came?
A new film elegy by Bryan Konefsky that uses the lens of loss and grief to explore intersections between memory and artifact.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Talking with My Daughter about Grief
We lie in the dark
and speak about anything
but what I ache to speak about.
Thomas McGuire: Rust
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. —Matthew 6:19-21 . Rust ruins metal everywhere. Dad, you would’ve fought … Continue reading
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Why I Stay Up Late Walking
Easier to be the one
who is gathered into
the field of darkness
by night’s great hands
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
