Sharon Fagan McDermott: Parli Italiano
Language is a song of loose coins, spilling down
from the fountains. Then bells of the Duomo ring
out over Firenze.
Judith Sanders: Autumn Walk at Beechwood Farms
You said, Name the world.
So I said, I call this a spangle tree.
How about, you said, a rose-hued spangle tree.
That’s beautiful, I said.
Let’s name the world together.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Sharon In Wonderland | Dandelion
The view from here? A prophecy
of how light, wind, and earth conspire
to play their role in dandelions’ flourishing—
then aids them in their vanishing.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Orchid Room, Phipps Conservatory
Grandma lived to be ninety-three
and wore the fabric of that tale to a soft sheen
with her retelling. Where does the past lie?
Sharon Fagan McDermott: This Against the Night
Sweet hyssop and the sweltering hives
from which sail bees, their resolute flight
into July, into my garden.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Meditation on a Sanctuary
And still there is shelter in shade
and pummeling rain, in the produce aisle
with its mounds of lemons, nectarines.
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Carrie Furnace, Pittsburgh
The light is water driven through old gears and red lights sweep the streets looking for the lost while flaking brick simmers in itself like stew, and black graffiti … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Book of Lesser Angers
presses each broken thing like an autumn leaf between pages where I watch the pace of disintegration, lacy residue. Rain writes within it a sloppy welter—the neighbor shaking her … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: What I Won’t Tell Myself
The moon salts the sky with stars and the only sounds in the house are the dog’s breath and the furnace’s belch through old pipes. On this coldest night of … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Halloween, Pittsburgh
such tender ghosts with their small hands reaching into bowls and baskets, so much that’s wrapped in shine even in the rain, even after disaster, even as the adults bury … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Sodden
About the Kavanaugh hearings… Awash, amuck in gunk and mud, the slogging bile of the rain Doused and logged, the watered tier of dying garden suddenly slippery, sopping, drenched. … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Body Dreams Itself
into an avenue of steam, the streetlights glow a slick sheen. And down this road, this August night thick as wet wool, a car rattles. The body dreams itself heavy, … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: The Lapses of Rain
Even in dreams, I fail to recognize these men. They are white blurs, edgeless, still talking. They turn rivers into sludge. Eagles into silica; air to lead. I wake up, … Continue reading
Sharon Fagan McDermott: Summer Prayer — Pennsylvania
~in memory of Brendan We make each other a mooring, early evening here in the small world, where gods grumble and root in the dirt and the red … Continue reading
