Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) Almost the twenty-first century — how quickly the thought will grow dated, even quaint. Our hopes, our future, will pass like the hopes and futures of others. And all our anxieties and terrors, nights of sleeplessness, griefs, will appear then as they truly are — Stumbling, delirious bees in …
Paul Kane – Time Was
Paul Kane (March 23, 1950 -) Still, I must not forget that I once managed to put these things into writing. — Blanchot When the high-pitched sounds of the August continuo circulated like breezes through the immovable heat, time was a single leaf drifting upwards, then down. In the emptying out, the vacating of routine, the …
May Sarton – Rinsing The Eye
May Sarton pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) Between me and everything I see. The glass is pain. How to slide it away, Unblur my vision? “We must rinse the eye,” My old friend, the poet, Used to say. But that was in Belgium Many years ago. Raymond …
Dorianne Laux – Mother’s Day
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1952 -) I passed through the narrow hills of my mother’s hips one cold morning and never looked back, until now, clipping her tough toenails, sitting on the bed's edge combing out the tuft of hair at the crown where it ratted up while she slept, her thumbs locked into her …
Joy Harjo – Remember
Joy Harjo (May 09, 1951 -) Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled …
Marie Howe – Singularity
Marie Howe (1950 -) *— after Stephen Hawking* Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were? so compact nobody needed a bed, or food or money — nobody hiding in the school bathroom or home alone pulling open the drawer where the pills are kept. For every atom belonging to …
Jane Ebihara – Last Kiss
Jane Ebihara First, in your seventies and alone, you read that those who count such things say an average person kisses for a total of two weeks in a lifetime. And you realize your two weeks was up some time ago. Suddenly there is kissing everywhere you look. And you learn that cows kiss and …
