Christopher Bursk: The Necropolis of Tarquinius
We’d just discovered a new word—necropolis—
and now we wanted a city of the dead
of our own. But it was too hard digging life-size
trenches, so we settled for the flower garden
our mother wouldn’t need anymore.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Three Ways of Looking at Beauty
When the hypnotherapist brought me out of my trance, I wondered about this deer, about my new vision of beauty—why had it changed? Something fundamental in me had shifted and reconstructed itself.
Kari Gunter-Seymour: Heartland Hospice
When I was a kid, sick, he’d sing Hank William’s
Hey Good Lookin,’ call me his best girl.
Doug Anderson: The Tyrant
The people beat him so badly
that afterward
they could not distinguish him
from the pigs the rebels slaughtered
Gerald Fleming: Work
Today you’ll work in the room behind the barn. For years there’s been a stain on the sheetrock where the rain drips in, and the place smells of rot, and when the other day you yanked off a chunk of sheetrock, thinking might be rotten wood in there, thinking you’d maybe have to replace a few studs, you found, in that damp place, everything rotten.
Majid Naficy: The Engraver
You put on your eyeglasses
And read me your daughter’s will
Word by word.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: When I Shut the Door
The news arrived by e-mail — a scribble of a long, single sentence, broken up, like little chunks of wood, the way a year is broken up into months and weeks, days, hours.
Andrew J. Bacevich: My Son Was Killed in Iraq 14 Years Ago—Who’s Responsible?
The Islamic Republic? George W. Bush? Both answers feel like evasions.
Jo McDougall: This Morning
A woman laughs
and my daughter steps out of the radio.
Grief spreads in my throat like strep.
Paul Christensen: What the Rain Says
She would die soon but neither of us knew that. Right now, the precious hours were dissolving in the pale afternoon light, just as the rain began again.
Deborah Bogen: Sisters
I’m the last sister standing — but tonight I mean to lie down, to practice being in the box
Valerie Bacharach: Gratitude Journal
I was sure that I had failed my mother, unable to keep her in her home, as I had once promised.
Jason Irwin: Giuseppe the Shoe-Maker
Giuseppe, a simple shoe-maker,
who never learned English, stood
banging his head against the wall,
cursing God in his native tongue
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Arroyo Burro Beach
Look at me, writing circles around what I must face:
The man I love is dead.
