Poetry |
“Caribbean Nocturne” & “At the Bottom of Tea Cups”
“I’ve never heard anyone say / referring to a tea drinker // that he was in his cups / though it could be said of me …”
Essay |
On Reading The Postcard and Reclaiming Jewish Stories
“I spent hours reading immigration papers and marriage certificates, but I longed for the sort of sensory-rich details that Berest uncovered in her research …”
Poetry |
“By Rote”
“An oak tag string of ABCs / Block style hangs above the blackboard. / Chalk dust tinges the letters of the law. / Diligently, a small girl copies …”
Fiction |
“A Terrible Gift”
“I’d always had trouble dedicating myself to one mode for long. I oscillated between the abstract, the realist, the symbolic. Beyond the embarrassment, it was a source of fear that I’d never be more than a tinkerer, a dilettante.”
Poetry |
“After Our Shift. Sanitarium 51,” “The Troubled Sleep of Jimmy L. Sanitarium 51,” “Mrs. Asra Leaves a Note Under the Vase. Sanitarium 51” & “The Professor Calculates Spring Using Schrondinger’s Thought Experiment.Sanitarium 51”
“No flashlights, just moonlight. Behind Dining’s dumpster. / Insomniacs and talkers, in rat grey pajamas. / Yeah, true we were breaking Rule Seven …”
Poetry |
“Felled Oak”
“For you, an eyesore, for me, an object / of light and form dignified by age // and trust, weathered or beaten, but there — / as if it would have reason to stay, // as if I had cause to see it as lovely.”
Essay |
“Bad News”
“He started walking west toward the Mississippi River which bordered the park, but he disappeared in the hazy darkness. The woman heard a splash. When she couldn’t locate him, she called the police.”
Poetry |
“Girls Department,” “1961” & “All At Once”
“My wet skirt stuck to the seat. / That breathtaking fist of pain / when the thickened wall I couldn’t see / shed its unbreathing ball of cells …”
Poetry |
“Summer, So Full”
“falcons coasting / on updrafts, / bougainvillea in bloom / and the dark high-res / glimmering indigo …”
Lyric Prose |
“Skate All the Way” & “I’ll Pick an Offering”
“Skate all the way. A slow two blocks to the park and then the two blocks back to your grandparents’ house on Robertson Road. The yellow house with the black porch swing and slick carport. Grapes in the arbor, hard and green.”
Poetry |
“Today My Mother Called to Apologize”
“Nothing else — she wanted to hang up / immediately after. She is 92. I am 64. / When I was 3, she put me in a diaper / to punish me for an accident.”
Poetry |
“Speaker,” “Fierce,” “Confessional” & “Concessions”
“Feral is the name given to what is wild / by what isn’t. Whatever it was that owned me, / that kept me guarded, has vanished, / has let me go …”
Poetry |
Poems from “The Lisa Sequence”
“… The last hour waiting / for clemency that does not come, telephone deadly still, petition / ignored. Last shifting its meaning from final to endure.”
Poetry |
“Duncan Farm November Meditation”
“what died with father / what died with mother / there was more i wanted to know / say again the names of distant places / russia lithuania ukraine”
Literature in Translation |
“Portrait of the hunt (the house)”
“Your idea of love was never excessive: / You first trust the thorn and then the rose, / in the fallow deer’s flight.”