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Author's Note: "Sometimes poets have epiphanies—sometimes we simply turn on the radio. I was listening to NPR when I heard the delightful tidbit that inspired this poem. I took words cut from magazines ... [Continue Story]
Author's Note: "Sometimes poets have epiphanies—sometimes we simply turn on the radio. I was listening to NPR when I heard the delightful tidbit that inspired this poem. I took words cut from magazines ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Something, Somehow, Somewhere” tells the story of a young Brooklyn farmer who travels across the country to meet her estranged father and his seemingly perfect family while a hurricane ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Sometimes when I sit quietly and pay attention, the story tells itself. Watching the pelicans, I began to contemplate the way life balances itself out: sometimes together, sometimes ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Keenly aware of the transient beauty along the dirt roads in County Claire, Ireland, I began this poem as a way to notice, savor, and hold these precious images close. But I ask: Am I ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “In his late thirties, my youngest brother, a big guy who owned a bar in a southern college town, decided to study nursing. Eventually, he became a nurse practitioner in Cleveland, Ohio. He loved the work, especially with veterans and seniors. We were both crazy-busy with our careers and families and only checked in with one another for a birthday, on the fly between bringing our kids from one event to another, and then, the pandemic hit. He was, and is, on the medical front lines. Our phone calls changed from quick and superficial to something else. These calls made me think about what was essential in life. Sometimes little brothers are useful.” ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “We can’t see dark energy or dark matter. We can’t see infrared, or ultraviolet light, yet we investigated and discovered they are real. What else exists beyond the limitations of our 5 ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “I spent the first six months of the pandemic with my parents, helping to care for my dementia-afflicted mother. In therapy they encourage you to personify your anxiety, and so I came to see death as an obnoxious pest with whom I squabble constantly, while holding fast to love and beauty. Writing this story was therapeutic for me – but the character of Brett is pure fiction!”
Orange
DEATH IS NOT A GRIM REAPER. You know because you are watching it now across the table. It is an orange sponge, and it floats to the right of your mother, leaching small things at first. Phone number recall. Range of motion in the fourth finger. An aversion to oversalting. These absences occur on the margins. But over time, greater things go missing. Bearings. Empathy. Nouns. The sponge swells. Sometimes it teases you by releasing a damp spot, a trickle. Death winks at you through your confusion. Death says, You didn’t know I could breathe? ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The Lesser Snow Goose was written shortly before my mother died. She is the ‘you’ in the poem—very ill, sitting beside me in the waiting area before a doctor’s visit. It felt fitting ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The history of the human race sadly seems also to be the history of warfare. In this poem I imagine what it would be like to be living on the edge of a war zone as fighting starts to break out, as is happening right now in Ukraine. The character in my poem is someone who lives, as I do, a secluded life in the country. He is perhaps Japanese; he is a sort of hermit.”... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “I was one of the first students to graduate from Howard University with an undergraduate degree in African American Studies. I learned a lot about the history of the Black family from reading books and attending conferences. This experience however didn’t explain the quiet dignity of my father. His love for his family was not an abstraction but a difficult and fragile thing I came to honor. I was grateful for my father who worked hard everyday to provide a roof over my head. Today I still struggle to understand the mystery of his strength and the power he found not to leave or close a door.”... [Continue Story]
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