Virtue

Two weeks before the move
You look hard at every cup,
Each one of your threadbare towels.
You envision sitting down on a rug far away
And pulling these things from a box.

Then you imagine a monastic existence,
A rug with no boxes. You've left
The cracked cups at the dump,
A bag of nice sweaters at Goodwill.
In the empty room you are proud
of the nothing you have. Then

In your mind the new doorbell rings.
Your neighbor has come
To introduce herself,
And she brought you yellow flowers,
In a cup she made herself.


photograph by Catherine Jamieson

Divorce, Part I: The Appearance

My husband arrives late, slides
into the space beside me on the cold wooden bench.
Like it's Christmas Eve, like it's
a bar mitzvah we're waiting for,
he reads his book, and I search faces
for stories. Two rows up, a man
lays his hand gently
on his wife's back, stares
at her baby-weight-swollen feet.
We are all here for the same reason.

My husband chuckles into his book,
points at the sentence I should read.
I whisper in his ear the name of the town
where I'm moving. I double-check
his paperwork. I drop one
of my own white pills into his open hand.

The heavy door closes. With brittle knees
and thin breath we all rise. The judge
calls our names first.


photograph by E.L. Malvaney

Tag with the Big Questions

You run and run, your mouth so dry.
You grope for a home base,
crying Who, and How, and Why,
and When will it be safe--

And then some unknown
tackles you, with arms measured to fit.
Why not somebody else, you say,
and the Answer says, "You're it."







photograph by Genevieve Goffman

What to Do When a Poet, Now Dead, Releases a New Book of Poems

in memory of Deborah Digges



Read the editor's note.

Reflect that this manuscript
has been respected. Wonder,
when you read that they tried
to preserve her intentions,
how much of her handwriting spattered
each page.

Read the epigraph--something
obscure--well, that's how
she would have wanted it.

Read the apologetic jacket,
the back cover with its
flat, detached praises.
On the back flap, her photograph.

Look hard at the headshot
as though her eyes, warm even
in a black and white rectangle,
have some explanation.

Close the book.

Try again tomorrow.




Painting: Cloud #16 by Ambera Wellmann

Warily Pleased

My poem "Laying Out a Yellow Dress the Night Before First Grade" has been accepted for publication in the brand-new Pitbull magazine. As one of the journals that accepted a poem of mine went under before printing that issue, and the other never seemed to go to press, I'm glad, but skeptical. It's nice that it's been accepted. We'll see if anything comes of it.




photograph copyright Vasilyeva Ekaterina

At Summer's End

The cricket in the lavender
doesn't ever seem to sleep.

All night he chatters, and next morning
he's still got plenty to say. I don't know

how long crickets live, but surely
last night was at least one year of his life.

What could be so interesting,
so complicated that it takes

a whole year to tell?
I sit in the crabgrass. I've got time.






photograph by Molly Wizenberg

The Holding Pattern

After a long day of waiting
on standby in San Antonio,
I win a window seat. I sit.
The aluminum cradle rocks
as baggage is hefted
and temporarily dropped. More delays,
sings the pilot in the speakers.
Thunderstorms over Atlanta.

Eventually we leave.
The heatsticky clouds
are black potholes in the air.
Gold lightning laces dark earth
to dark sky. My world
turns sideways.

Gravity, you greedy girl,
give me a few more minutes.
I will be yours again
before this storm
is over.





photograph by Marko Tarvainen