Sometimes in the fading winter light that streaks my desk by six o’clock revealing grains in aging oak, like desert sands, I imagine, before leaving my shelved books to laze with those I love before the easy flicker of some talk show on TV, that I stay back this time, …
translated by Lyn Coffin, with Leda Pugh Oh, pain will die, I swear, when I succeed in making a Myshkin of these tears to master agony, quietly, there where I burn with beautiful helpless need, where voices go mute, and feelings wake late, before finally disbanding. To smile (to reach understanding) just as He said….
Good-looking husky guy six-foot-four in late twenties or early thirties, Caucasian male, as the initial police report will note, he’s solid-built as a fire hydrant, carries himself like an athlete, or an ex-athlete just perceptibly thickening at the waist, otherwise in terrific condition like a bronze figure in motion, sinewy arms pumping as he…
"Just in time for cocktails!" our mother’s mother, Gran, says, obviously exasperated, coming to meet us out on the drive. We were supposed to be there for lunch. Now, dressed in her cocktail clothes—white pants, a silk smock, gold shoes, and jewelry—after perfunctory kisses hello (she’s irritated) and the quickest sizing up of our mother’s…
Hot Los Angeles summer days, late ’50’s, a seven-year-old Shut in the tiny, midtown apartment on South Kingsley Drive, I’d flip on the TV to the black-and-white game shows, Rerun comedies, and half-hour detective dramas, Seeking company, avoiding the soaps, news, and cartoons. One of my favorites for a while was a show called Kideo…
There’s mercy in the decades as they pass, reducing years of ache to a single afternoon beneath a cherry tree in a terraced garden: the cherries seem to ripen while we gaze, darkening as sunlight starts to fade. You’re talking; I’m waiting for you to realize what you won’t admit for another decade: love is…
translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday, a day and night without a single question, surprised by nothing. I performed my ordinary chores, as if nothing more were required. Inhale, exhale, step by step, tasks and errands, and not a single thought beyond setting out and getting home again….
marjorie agosin is a Chilean-American poet, editor, and human rights activist. She is the Luella Laneer Slain Professor of Latin American Studies at Wellesley College. She has received numerous awards for her poetry and human rights work, and has authored more than forty books of poetry, memoirs, and essays, as well as two plays. charles…
This is my father bent like a Michelangelo prophet over a tray of spore, showing me how to pour boiling water over the soil to eradicate fungi, etc. I stand beside him ignoring his lecture. Instead watch steam from his coffee cup curl into the blue of the tubular daylight bulbs. This is my brother…
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