Pablo Neruda – Melancholy Inside Families

“But above all there is a terrifying, a terrifying deserted dining room, with its broken olive cruets”

Wayne Miller – Parable of Childhood

“Dad thought of his own father, who’d died a year before the boy was born. A long suffering—until at last his body had filled with snow. No one knows what death is, dad said. I wish I had a better answer for you.”

Jennifer Chang – The Lonely Humans

“To stay together, look away, some god said. Here in these trees, our voices have no faces, we’ve walked like this for an eternity”

John McCarthy – When You’re Young You Always Take Too Much

“For a few minutes, everyone loses themselves, staring at the muted fields that look like a future that hasn’t become anything yet.”

William Waring Cuney – No Images

“If she could dance naked under palm trees and see her image in the river, she would know.”

Louise Glück – Parable of the Swans

“On the muddy water they bickered awhile, in the fading light, until the bickering grew slowly abstract, becoming part of their song after a little longer.”

Miller Oberman – Taharah

“remembering, as you go about your holy ritual, how frightening it is to be naked before another, at the mercy of a stranger’s eyes, without even any breath.”

Seamus Heaney – Digging

“Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”

Tracy K. Smith – Charity

“I am you, one day out of five, Tired, empty, hating what I carry But afraid to lay it down”

Rosmarie Waldrop – Aging

“Distant galaxies are moving away from us. Friends, lovers, family. Even the sky shifts toward red”