from The Neighbour My dad was such a liar. It was all about perception, I had to be a refined lady I never carried myself like a slut, not even nail polish. I was perfect. I fooled them all, to the point where I fooled myself. I was fictitious. I wore […]
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October 4, 2020 – 6:44 pm
CHERRIES The woman standing in the Whole Foods aisle over the pyramid of fruit, neatly arranged under glossy lights, watched me drop a handful into a paper bag, said how do you do it? I always have to check each one. I looked down at the dark red fruit, each cherry good in its own, […]
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March 29, 2020 – 12:23 pm
It’s narrow . . . It’s narrow, and no room For error—I zig And zag through The treacherous channel. What fool said joy Is less risky than grief? My ship could wreck On either shore. Needing to navigate By contradiction: What I want to grip, I need to release. When despair says “Let go,” I […]
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The last love poem I will ever write…. Will contain an invention for turning ant’s tears Into hummingbird wings. It will hold every Elegy the night sky ever wrote for the moon. It will reveal the answer to the question “Yes.” It will feature a rosebush that grew naturally Into the shape of a woman, […]
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August 30, 2019 – 6:44 pm
A Song of What Happens If I wrote in a short story Or novel that when my father Was young, about thirteen, He and his best friend Stole a rifle from the car trunk Of a man who worked For his family, then took paper plates from the kitchen And went out into a field, […]
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August 1, 2019 – 11:59 pm
Song of Aftermath Standing now, in a place Scrubbed raw by flood. I, who sought neither Rapture nor fracture. Now the question is: What do you do with shatter? Someone else’s map? I’d end up half-trapped; And even the best often Just guess what’s next. If I’m to […]
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Sorrow is good; Tears are good. But too much Grief erodes. What if all The soft soil Washes away And only hard Furrows remain? Then what? Then what can grow in us? Gregory Orr from The River Inside the River, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013 It seems as if the small poems I chose for […]
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Note to self: remember What Emerson said of Thoreau— That he loved the low In nature: Muskrats And crickets, suckers And frogs. Not stars. Songs of the carnal, Songs of what we are. Gregory Orr (1947 – ) from River Inside the River, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013 Greg Orr’s recent small poems fit so […]
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October 26, 2014 – 5:41 pm
I sometimes think art is useless in the face of extreme suffering, but then I remember Miklos Radnoti, Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, or Mandelstam—and I bow my head (to them) in awe. I suppose I do believe that the greatest art consoles a wound that it creates, that art can give you the capacity to […]
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What a journey I had this morning! It started with finding a Hirschfield quote in the 2012 book A God in the House: …poetry exists in part to enlarge us, to deliver us into the not yet known. Writing is an act that generates and expands attention. And if I’m lucky, I may write something […]
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