Joan Biddle's blog

Poet and Writer

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Returning to Books

Do you have those books or songs that stick with you for a long time?

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Woof, This Heat

What a wonder that among the worst things that has ever happened in her life is Loretta Lynn.

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New year things

Some questions to ask going into the new year about the last year:

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Two poems: "Snow" and "Mending Wall"

I offer these two poems, which I’ve recorded above.

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On appetite

There was a white chocolate candy bar once that I couldn’t eat. I once was so sick in heartbreak or teen angst or depression or whatever it

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Accidental art

on secret apartments and life as art

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Cut blooms

a poem

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Creating space

Lessons from Greg's couch and Ross Gay

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While Everything Else Was Falling Apart

In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen years ago now, the L train came clanking by where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart o

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Road with porcupine

a poem

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The Last Love Letter of Marie Curie         Polish-born Marie Sklodowska made great scientific achievements in radiology after moving to Paris, where she married French physicist Pierre Curie before dying from long-term exposure to radiation.

Please put me with your hands. My palms are empty. I counted down from ten each time I dared to think you loved me. Now, of course, I'm scared I'll seduce the second world too soon and empty this first one out before I've finished it. Among my scattered notes you'll find the first heart I ever drew. Written in the worst French, Please, put me with your hands. And it meant that I wanted to feel surrendered to. Some nights, awake, I wonder why we leave the dust behind that we do. Does grief grieve itself? The cells and circumstances we liken to living are what slough away. We've seen the light that grows inside us. Long as bones. And white.

Copyright © 2024 Ash Bowen All rights reserved from The Shore

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Morning Song and Evening Walk

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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The Apartment

a poem

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And now I'm walking in the park And all of the birds, they dance below me Maybe when things turn green again It will be good to say you know me

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Reflecting on Summer

I got woken up early this morning by loud chainsaws in the neighbors’ yard.

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On banishing our desires

The sun started to rise outside and I had a tingling feeling in my chest. We all rested on the pullout couch in the den. Harry and the Hende

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“Talk” by Noah Warren

published in The Nation

Love of the world is so clearly come and go,

the way we talk sounds beautiful and sad.

You have to try these three words before you can

say the harder thing.

The air at evening crumbles into rose flakes.

The wind like a child’s breath.

This is cement. It's’ almost hard now, but when it’s new, it’s soft.

If we step in it then it’ll be there forever.

To describe is to praise, I’ve always felt that.

Two crows fly up and disappear into the depths of the redwood.

Talking with Sarah in bed I touch her hair.

How often do we use the word “safe” each day? Thanks,

a walk sounds nice. When I write this

winter I trace lines of motion I conclude

I’ve lived. My mentor tell me I am

more than a series of inclinations,

twilight knotted with dislikes.