Linda Pastan
Now each finger adds its measure; you are pulled down by the weight of your own hair. And if your life should disappear ahead of you you would not run after it. — Linda Pastan, from “Pain,” Poetry (August 1978) Advertisements
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Stephen Dunn
More and more you learn to live with the unacceptable. You sense the ever-hidden God retreating even farther, terrified or embarrassed. — Stephen Dunn, from “Before the Sky Darkens,” as quoted in “Down from the Tower: Poetry as Confabulation,” by Bill Christophersen, Poetry (January 2002)
Margaret Atwood
Everything once had a soul, even this clam, this pebble. Each had a secret name. Everything listened. Everything was real, but didn’t always love you. You needed to take care. — Margaret Atwood, from “Because We Love Bare Hills and Stunted Trees,” Poetry Ireland Review Issue 116
Baily Cohen
I’ve never wanted more than to be a ghost and reach through your chest and grab the shatterable thing, only to forget what I cannot touch. Like so many sharp things, I know I couldn’t stand to watch myself disappear into you. — Baily Cohen, from “Have I Ever Been Wicked?” The Boiler (no. 29,… Continue reading Baily Cohen
Fernando Pessoa
I hear the wind blow, and I feel that it was worth being born just to hear the wind blow. — Fernando Pessoa, from “Discontinuous Poems,” trans. Edouard Roditi, Poetry (October 1955)
Richard Jackson
Why is it we love so fully what has washed up on the beaches of our hearts, those lost messages, lost friends, the daylight stars we never get to see? Bad luck never takes a vacation, my friend once wrote. It lies there among the broken shells and stones we collect, a story he would… Continue reading Richard Jackson
Erin Slaughter
It takes a thing like the frailty of the body to make you feel it. The distance between love and isolation — Erin Slaughter, from “Elegy for the Body,” Boxcar Poetry Review (Spring 2016)
