by Maggie Smith Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my […]
by Ted Kooser We all watched as the President awkwardly carried a big wreath to the Grave of the Unknown Soldier, a ring of a thousand keys that he held out before him in both manicured hands, knowing that somewhere among them was the key to the love of the people for which he’d been […]
by Osama Alomar QUICKSAND “It’s rare that anyone gets away from me,” the quicksand said in a voice filled with confidence. But the quicksands of life answered her scornfully, saying: “How many people keep flailing and thrashing in me all through their life, and they neither get away nor drown entirely!”
by Sarah Manguso There truly are two kinds of people: you and everyone else. It’s impossible to fail if one doesn’t know how the end should look. And it’s impossible to succeed. But it’s possible to enjoy. Envy is a narrative impulse: if I got what I wanted, what would happen then? My long romance […]
by Ocean Vuong Suppose you do change your life. & the body is more than a portion of night—sealed with bruises. Suppose you woke & found your shadow replaced by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful & gone. So you take the knife to the wall instead. You carve & carve until a coin […]
by Peter Balakian The day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees. When I tell you that day is a poem I’m only talking to you and only the sky is listening. The sky is listening; the sky is as hopeful as I am walking into the pomegranate seeds of the wind that whips […]
by Alicia Ostriker The killing will not stop. A scarlet hail is always behind our eyes. The morning paper, shreds of flesh, poisons the bread, the salt, the cheese. Husband, I want to fight the good battle of hip, and breast, and thigh, where pleasure, spoil of sinew, breeds outrageous generosity. I want to […]
by Eileen Myles That whole part of the world where I won’t go any- more that whole separation that I won’t feel high in this house in this hemisphere in this artificial light that is artificial in the earliest morning; dark in pages and pens in an unfamiliar bed in the foot curl
by Eileen Myles Close to the door in my dream the small signs I saw a brown sign with wisdom on it I saw a brown one leaning with wisdom on it
by Rowan Ricardo Phillips We’d cut school like knives through butter, the three Of us—Peter, Stephen and I—to play Just about all the music we knew, Which meant that from nine in the morning till Steve’s parents, the ever-patient Murtaughs, Would get home from work, I played guitar, Peter played bass, and Steve (who’d end […]
