“When he is very ferocious with me I cry;that sets all things straight,” Charlotte Brontë wrote.This passage strikes me as a little sly,yes? In it, Brontë almost seems to gloatabout the way that she has weaponizedher tears, her God-given power to emote.A male biographer once characterizedBrontë as “meek” on the basis of this quote—a reading…
Here is my shapeless dignity—the dark loves anything with a shadow.Sweeping. A pile of fallen leaves.I love the night’s genderless hands. The dark loves anything with a shadow.I’ve never known where the water is sourced.I love the night’s genderless hands. It canbe a shock to drink from an underground spring. I’ve never known where the…
Approaching the deepest, wildest terrain of this editorial process, mid-correspondence with many of the writers whose work appears here, I opened a pivotal email. A poet asked whether I was seeking work around a particular theme. I replied: “I’m looking for poems in which structure and meaning are so tightly woven they can’t be separated—structure…
For flowers that heal watercolor purple TyrianDesire that possesses you sugar in the raw Naturally fond of morning star evening starWhenever Venus comes to upper purple register I feel you do you feel me electrically hereIn a rose vine room imaginary couple Reader writer reader I wish for you playJoy and a way to move…
Zach loves to sing Hi-ho, the derry-o, Obama in the dell.So charmed am I, I don’t correct him, conjuring upthe president standing in a lush nursery rhyme valley,meeting Michelle. Obama takes a wife. Then they are offto kids and cows, dogs and mice, a totally different life. A few years later, Zach’s little brother Alex begs to beDonald…
At the Bronx Zoo Everyone mentions them in the same breath,lions and tigers. How strange, then, to seethey are more different than anyone guessed:based on the two we were lucky to see,lions bask lazily in the same spothour after hour, not afraid to be spotted,scrutinized, photographed, chattered about,in contrast to tigers, who stride through the…
What happened?Eight-year-old (or nine-year-old) HenriettaKing whose job it was to empty chamberpots. Always the job of the lowest caste—Dalits, burakumins, or here as (was Henrietta)—slaves.Eight-year-old (or nine-year-old) Henriettadoes it here or rather there.Yes, here it is done by little HenriettaKing, a slave. Hungry half-starved worked hard.The Missus put out a piece of candy to seeif…
Allison’s mother’s favorite piece of advice was “Be nice to people who aren’t obviously useful to you.” One doesn’t need religion to understand that, Allison thought, but she didn’t follow the advice. Her mother said the Torah was there in case of emergency. “In case of emergency, break glass.” It was funny to hear her…
Sometimes I’m a little birdflying under the sassafrastree—strange planthas three kinds of Leaves—Simple, Mitten, and three-fingeredGlove—last year they chopped you down Sassafras I thought you Dead / stump ground downto nothing / now I lay that yellow birdunderneath—found she needed sassafrasto cure her aching head, fingeredand tearful lying on a floor of leavesas if she…
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