Poetry |
“The Glass Parrot” and “Elegy in Susan’s Garden”
“I have never understood the way stars burst / apart. I am deaf to wind and trees, / to the rose bush we planted.”
Poetry |
“Crystallography” and “In The Garden”
“You end up in a cute little town / that ends up having its water poisoned. / Fish are the first to betray the intruder. / Mercury rising. Octacarbon will follow your cattle / to their quick peace …”
Poetry |
“When You Go to Venice Alone” and “The Uses of Pain”
“And when he finally appears, / about twenty and no English, / you’ll shadow him past the Fenice, / follow his gesture up the endless stairs.”
Poetry |
“Fugitive”
“How we touched tongues once / during a sleepover. How your parents // encouraged us to shower together to save water.”
Poetry |
“I Think It Is Such a Beautiful” & “Not, like Venus, come ashore on a shell”
“as if time — those four years / between your births — were folded / and the two births became / one double emergence: // you, and you, and none other.”
Poetry |
“13 by 13 — things that are left and lucky” & “He Asked and We Married Twice”
“the math involved, of scant numerology / for example / exact time of birth / 6:21 PM — that’s two threes / recombine them all and divide and add shape”
Poetry |
“Donald listens to the whole pitch sheet” “Helena already knew how to knit” “Does Samantha have children herself?” & “Wanda’s mother worked in the toll booth”
“Her very next call, she soberly / read through the things / she’d been given to say. Bowling, / tires, chicken, paint. All of it / ten percent off. The only rule / she broke was pausing …”
Poetry |
“Great Egret”
“I’m returned to the old story / of the swan maiden — // that bird-girl, wife, mother, / then bird again when she reclaimed / her feathered cloak …”
Poetry |
from the “Monpeyroux Sonnets”
“A rainy Monday, everything is shut. / It could be late October; it’s mid-May. / Lights on at noon, outside, rain drums on gray / paving stones, drainpipes, voices.”
Poetry |
“Trophy,” “Pond,” “Oh” & “Fare Thee Well”
“What a thought — it / sounds almost childish, so / simple, as if the sun / had given itself / a trophy when a blue jay / flew from a tree …”
Poetry |
“A Zoom Reading in Which Fanny Howe’s Computer Dies”
“Fanny begins to read, and through / the screen of her screen to mine, she says / she’s wearing the wrong glasses. Oh technology — // just failure made more efficient.”
Poetry |
“Awakening from a Dream” & “What the Migraine Said”
“The sleep of reason produces monsters — / this we know from art and the news: / murder and sham leaders shooting themselves / in one foot and chewing on the other.”
Poetry |
“The Mothers”
“The mothers watched us, / and we watched them, my mother working clay, / Barbara’s mother, long at her easel, Jean’s mother, / swimming and sketching.”
Poetry |
“Translating the Body”
“Our organs sing in different keys / like sirens in a sea of blood. / The body feels before it knows.”