Afternoon darkens into evening. A man falls deeper and deeper into the slow spiral of sleep, into the drift of it, the length of it, through what feels like mist, and comes at last to an open door through which he passes without knowing why, then again without knowing why goes to a room where… Continue reading Mark Strand
Holding on makes nothing stay. Give things permission to go. Touch with gentleness, release, and rooted objects will break loose, a landslide that gathers speed and leaves a brightness in its wake, a lacy layer of memories like foam lines scribbled on a beach. — Rachel Hadas, from “Piece by Piece,” Gettysburg Review (vol. 32,… Continue reading Rachel Hadas
or maybe I was born with stitches on the edges of my heart — Kelli Russell Agodon, from “Torn (Old Fabric),” The Shore (no. 3, Autumn 2019)
The anagram of the name from its cipher– birds light across the silhouetted sky. The birds and not the sky. Your body leaves a trace in the valley of snow. The trace and not the body. — Jacqueline Winter Thomas, from “One Year of Winter,” Mid-American Review Volume: 39.2 | Year: 2019
Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade. Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you like a sparrow stunned with falling. — Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” Poetry… Continue reading Ocean Vuong
Your absence has robbed me of sleep. It’s the one and only shelter that a trapped person has–that nothing without which everything is impossible. — Anna Bolava, from “Setting Free,” B O D Y (20 November 2019)
Little soul, you and I will become the memory of a memory of a memory. A horse released of the traces forgets the weight of the wagon. — Jane Hirshfield, from “Harness,” Poetry (February 2017)
