To A Future Reader I beg you, tell me the words I left ended up funny, gave you guffaws as the planet went all to hell in ways I was not sad enough to imagine. Ave Atque Vale Farewell Priscila Uppal from Ontological Necessities, Exile Editions, 2006 This kind of takes my breath away. […]
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The Tale of Postpartum The doctor is ancient and I don’t think she can hear me when I say, my columna verterbral is on the outside now. She asks, do you like caring for the baby? I nod. Yes, I love caring for the baby. And then I whisper. But how long can a woman […]
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Machinery My father loved every kind of machinery, relished bearings, splines, windings, and cogs, loved the tolerances between moving parts and the parts that moved the parts, the many separate machines of machinery. Loved the punch, the awl, the ratchet, the pawl. In-feed and out-feed rollers of the thickness planer, its cutter head and cutters. […]
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March 21, 2021 – 10:04 pm
A Flame God, give us a long winter and quiet music, and patient mouths, and a little pride – before our age ends. Give us astonishment and a flame, high, bright. Adam Zagajewski,translated by Renata Gorczynski and Clare Cavanaugh from Without End – New and Selected Poems, 2002 Oh, Adam Zagajewski was given astonishment and […]
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January 12, 2021 – 11:39 pm
When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door […]
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December 6, 2020 – 5:03 pm
Dear Tomorrow, I could do it again, watch the heron carry my grandmother’s verses to its despair garden. I could be a citizen of evergreens and tend to a homeland of weeds in the forest with something resembling love. I can accept the patience white strawberries require. I can learn prayers in the spring kingdom, […]
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October 29, 2020 – 10:43 pm
This year’s title for the Hillhurst poetry-as-prayer retreat comes from the Fisherman’s Prayer as quoted by American poet Dorianne Laux, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize: Dear Lord, be good to me, the sea is so wide and my boat is so small. Please consider this invitation to shout out in your own […]
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September 1, 2020 – 10:25 pm
from Find the Poets Find the poets, my friend said. They will not speak of the things you and I speak about. They will not speak of economic integration or fiscal consolidation. They could not tell you anything about the burden of adjustment. But they could sit you down and tell you how poems are […]
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A Small Ambition To be no more than mist rising above the rushes, entering the white limbs of the trees. For just one hour to be a calmness a lifting up minus bones and muscles, minus memory and cognition and your own insistent longing to last. Lorna Crozier from THE HOUSE THE SPIRIT BUILDS, (Poems […]
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A Cento by Nancy Issenman Say Yes Sniff the naked page It is time to praise! white ash, sassafras so beautiful on the tongue waves of language across the skin (makes) all the world a page I have to say yes. I can smell this poem as one layer devours the next your calligraphic hand […]
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