Monthly Archives: July 2018

More on Ursula K. Le Guin – Part One of a Two Part Series

In class, she said, “We writers are the raw nerve of the universe. Our job is to go out and feel things for people, then to come back and tell […]

The Silences That Move Us To Speak – Ilya Kaminsky’s Poetry

Search Patrols I cover the eyes of Gena, 7, and Anushka, 2, as their father drops his trousers to be searched, and his flesh shakes, and around him: silence’s gross […]

When Death Came She Was Ready – A Deathbed Poem by Anna Swir

Tomorrow They Will Carve Me Death came and stood by me. I said: I am ready. I am lying in the surgery clinic in Krakow. Tomorrow they will carve me. […]

Life: Beautiful or Monstrous or Both? Three Poems by Swir, Mahon and Gilbert

Poetry Reading I’m curled into a ball like a dog that is cold. Who will tell me why I was born, why this monstrosity called life. The telephone rings. I […]

Built to Bend – A Poem by Jala al-Din Rumi and One in Response by Me (Richard Osler)

  Today like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty […]

A Poem for Andy – Waiting for Surgery on July 12th, 2018

Waiting A sound so loud: a dry leaf falling. The ground littered with yellow silences. I walked here with you once, the Arbutus grove, their leaves dropping and their copper […]