Three Poems
Alma from Aktion T4 before I tell you how I died, I’dtell you how I was bornif I could remember my first breath,the midwife, and the warmroom—at least one of those is true—Mumwould sayif she’d outlived me seventy threeyears instead of twenty but she was always moving,her hips like dancingwhen she walkeda river with her…
Read MoreStolen Family Jewels, and Other Gifts
A few years ago a woman stole several pieces of sentimental jewelry from our house. My husband’s gold baby bracelets from India, and a thick gold chain, a gift from his grandparents. It was the necklace he wore every day the summer we met, when I could think of nothing but him, the necklace laying…
Read MoreTwo Poems: Hovering; Stasis
Hovering With six days to go before the world ends I still need to takethat helicopter ride. To circlehigh above the city where you live,to look for you waving up at me – I was kidding about the six days.It’s five.Kidding again.The truth iswe have no idea, and if you know anything about uncertainty you…
Read MoreRegardless of What You Face | 5 Paintings
Two Poems: Wolf; Reciprocity
Wolf Sometimes, a wolf gets in.At first, his intentions for youare unclear. He noses throughthe cabinets and eats, butleaves your flesh unmangled.You go to work, to the bank.When you return home, heis still there, draped acrossthe sofa. He looks up at youas you drop your keys ontothe end table, as you turnfrom him to twist…
Read MoreThe Vacation Fight
Ordering breakfast that morning was the first time Leslie heard his wife’s voice, for which he was grateful; she simply could have pointed to the menu to make her selections. They had not even discussed where to have breakfast but habitually migrated to the patio restaurant of the hotel where they were staying. Every day…
Read MoreI Asked a Color Once What Made It a Color
“Light,” it said. The color green. On a hike, it’s the easiest to encounter. “There’s nothing more to it?” I said, walking beside green up a shallow grade. “I suppose fundamental physics are involved, reflection, refraction, light absorption, quanta, but what difference does that make? It’s all about the light.” “So is darkness, but that’s…
Read More26 Tea Lights
On the morning of Sandy Hook, as twenty-six lives were ending in Newtown, Connecticut, my husband and I walked a visiting Israeli high school group on a tour of Salem, Massachusetts, 170 miles north. We led 26 teenagers through a memorial for the 20 men and women killed during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.…
Read MoreTwo Poems: Raspberries; The Blue Heron
Raspberries In those last pictures of youyour hair is redbut not the red of raspberries that grow feral and fiercein the green mountainsthat surround you. No, rather the redof maples that snapand burn, sap running strong and persistent,even as days grow cold,and you at the old maple table, writing lovepoems to a dead man,poems that…
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