One summer he planted a tree it was young, just a few branches no bigger than a rosebush. We were intent on watching it we were young we wanted the fruit to come. Father brought the coffee can outside paced between the tree and the backyard spigot. We liked to watch him fill the can…
I sat in a crowded place away from you at dinner and did not pray you’d come near: did not imagine the hall our private room; did not want to approach you with an air of feigned indifference, leaving my meal- time companions behind; did not conspire alone to lure you into talk, to feel…
Kneeling last night as children sometimes do, After scrubbing off the filth of the day, Undressed at my bed I bent and prayed For some warm dream, for some comforting sooth To say, In the morning, arise. My sleep was elusive, as it often can be, The starry firmament of self reproach Circumnavigating this shabby…
1. The Sandbox We celebrated a funeral for a dead ladybug and smoothed the surface with the belly of a spoon. Who would count the tiny dots now, or study the long crawl and sudden flight? We dug a pit for a hemlock leaf curled into itself. We said last rites for a fleck of…
Last night I walked in a field. The moon lit the snow: snow gray as the moon. And tried to remember your face—Luna Moth, circling the cold flame of the moon. At the same moment you looked up, protracting the old angle: self, secret-love, and the moon. The earth was young too. But what’s left…
To an outsider, the grieving at the Burns Bungalows looked like revels. Mrs. Oates, the registered guest, counted five men climbing the hill to the main office with six-packs of beer in each hand. Women came, too, bearing plates covered with dishtowels, babies, or crock pots in their arms, or long bottles wrapped in paper…
Charles Simic, Jackstraws, poems: In his thirteenth collection, Simic sometimes experiments with form, but is characteristically lyrical, sly, irascible, undeniably funny. His poems continue to startle, the “big topics” mixing with everyday annoyances. (Harcourt)
Marcia’s parents, who still lived in New Jersey, were truly happy when she came to live in the East again. Her father said, “Hey! That’s more like it,” when she first told them she was moving to New York. “About time!” her mother said. Nobody mentioned the years when they had been so bitterly against…
One of those early summer days, driving west on Carson Street, heading for parts unknown, singing aloud in my head, saying Lord, Lord, what am I to do? Not a heaviness in my heart, not a lightness in my heart, but the usual hum and rush of living in this city of bungalows and smokestacks…
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