Poetry |
“The Fall Flower Show at Phipps”
“See their elegant forms and the exquisite care needed to restrain their growth, / years of work to send one branch upward …”
Poetry |
“Illinois”
“The first time hatred handcuffed me was at the corner / between Commercial Avenue and Third / where it slammed me on the hood of a patrol car.”
Poetry |
“Airshow”
“A sleek fighter climbs and dives / in mock attacks, slamming the awestruck / crowd with the sledgehammer / of its booming metallic roar.”
Poetry |
“August, Old Brickyard, Chilmark”
“Mother/daughter, / we stage a scenic selfie –– masked // faces foreground, backdrop / chimney of the brick factory ruin …”
Essay |
from The Murders of Moisés Ville: The Rise and Fall of the Jerusalem of South America
“In its issue from December 9, 1894, the newspaper Ha-Tzfira noted that the collection of books being brought by Reuben Sinay had increased to 120 pudi. The ‘pood’ is a Russian unit of mass, and converting this gives us an incredible figure of two metric tons.”
Fiction |
“Invasion Theory”
“The only transformation that allows for true escape is the transformation not of the one who flees but of the one who chases.”
Poetry |
“The Supermarket”
“When I read the cashier’s name tag — Penelope — / I think: she must be so lonely. She scans my almond butter, / and I imagine her response: I’m not your cliché.
Poetry |
“I Bend,” “Fruit in the Borrowed Home” & “Snow Years”
“your snow birthday is when how / many years you’ve seen it is the same as how many years / you have left (I had a snow birthday once)”
Poetry |
“Domesticated”
“I decide that the Hungarian language, obscure as it is, resembling almost nothing else. derives from the movement of Mongolians on ponies.”
Poetry |
“The Shape of Moving”
“It’s where the wind ends, his note says, / and no one finds him for so long he’s been eaten // by insects and vultures — all but his bones and cap …”
Poetry |
from Leaving: A Poem from the Time of the Virus
“… nobody // themselves anymore, not a single apparition, / withdrawal after defeat // but no destination.”
Essay |
“The ‘A’ In Abortion”
“They ask if we want to look at him, and my then-husband leaves the recovery area for the neonatal ICU located somewhere else in the hospital, but I say no. When he returns, I ask him to describe what he saw …”
Poetry |
“Poem About Remembrance,” “Poem About Literary Scholars,” “Poem About Journalists,” “Poem About God,” “Poem About Appearances,” “Poem About Death”
“Memory requires kindness and clean air. Hence, it’s easier to care for memories in Bermuda than in Eastern Europe. It’s only with seagrass in the mouth that one remembers elegantly.”
Poetry |
“You Learned an Anne Sexton Poem”
“You learned an Anne Sexton poem, / to share at my Quaker wedding. We worried over one word, / a tiny one that made the stanza sing. But would my mother want to hear it, / from the pew?”