Living

Keetje Kuipers on becoming a single mother by choice, gardening topless, and leaping without looking.

i

The last time I lost you, I had turned
To salt. The hospice nurses all assured
An easier passing…

I'm a sea since I could never have been a river
An unchanneled sea
of green merriments
and solitary depths…

Tiana Clark on divorce, joy, and taking up space on the page.

miss you calling me at work
leaving stupid jokes on my phone

like the one about the Arapaho, the Navajo…

Unto seventy years and seven,
   Hide your double birthright well—
You, that are the brat of Heaven
   And …

What if you come
Again and swell
The throat of some
Mute bird;
How shall I tell?
How shall I know.
That it is so,
Having heard?

Rebecca Lindenberg on diabetes, a final phone call, and letting yourself fall in love.

In church
we said Satan, get thee behind
and I always laughed. A demon child
with a twisted mouth,

Every morning opening the newspaper, I am faced
with the thin line that divides disaster and deprivation
from a world of luminous wealth. Tuesday, January 29th,
for instance, bodies, many of them children, lie on the ground
They drowned in the canal trying to escape a weapons depot fire
and explosion in Lagos. Their heads are twisted in straw and dust
near the feet of on-lookers whose cries we cannot hear

You may find her behind 

         Rowan Oak, a shadow 

              of fortress where then now 

         you find no real entry place. 

"A car" "awash with blood" "Blood at our feet" "& I
& others" "have small springs" "of blood from our…

Catherine Barnett on improv, misfit details, and the humor in elegy. 

Wake, butterfly—
it's late, we've miles
to go together.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish…

Grief is a Mouse—
And chooses Wainscot in the Breast
For His shy House—
And baffles quest—

These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield…

The Last Lesson
When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?
How long have they tugged the leash…