in you everything sank

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One Year Later: Her Answer Chen Chen

In memory of Ruthann Johnson

September, again & she is

not, again & he keeps thinking of things to ask her then remembering he can’t, & I could

ask, in a beautiful poem sort of way, what was the creature she always wanted

to growl as, the candy she always hoped to create? But I want him to be able to pick up the phone, to call his mom with all his beautifully

boring questions—yeah, it’s the fridge again, what should I do? What should I check first?

Should I take everything out? Just put it on the floor? Are you home, are you watching Frasier?  

But the last question I can remember, the one I keep remembering her answer to

was in the hospital. & I can’t stop hearing, seeing her voice, her face in the hospital, when the social worker came, asked if everyone in the room

was family—when his mother, from her bed, looked right at me, said, Yes.

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Divine Hours Kwame Opoku-Duku

That morning the thunder struck while the city slept—so loudly, millions of us woke up together, as if by spell or magic—the fog was so thick, I couldn’t see anything outside my window; there were only the sounds of the pigeons and sparrows chirping, their wings desperately flapping in unison, and, Beloved, it was glorious! I meant to tell you, later that evening, as we sat on a bench in that tulip garden in the Village, that years ago I met a prophet on the corner of 125th and Lenox. Beloved, when he spoke to me, there were chills all over my body. I wanted you to know that it was never about belief for me— only, always about the feeling—the knowing—of what is holy. That morning, I had woken from a dream. We had fled to Brazil to search for heaven. I told you I loved you, but I should have called you Nyamekye—God’s Gift. The tulips were in full bloom. We drank Ethiopian honey wine. Do you remember, even the highway medians were lined with daffodils? The plastic flaps of the warehouse shimmered like curtains laced with silver. The dandelions exploded out of the grass like bombs!

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96 Vandam Gerald Stern

I am going to carry my bed into New York City tonight complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets; I am going to push it across three dark highways or coast along under 600,000 faint stars. I want to have it with me so I don't have to beg for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends. I want to be as close as possible to my pillow in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by. I want to fall asleep on my own fire escape and wake up dazed and hungry to the sound of garbage grinding in the street below and the smell of coffee cooking in the window above.

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Rain Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain. And gave over. Put myself entirely in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again? Make the same unforgiveable mistakes? Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

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I Go Down To The Shore Mary Oliver

I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.

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The Two-Headed Calf Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual.

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Molly Brodak Molly Brodak

I am a good man. The amount of fear I am ok with is insane. I love many people who don't love me. I don't actually know if that is true. This is love. It is a mass of ice melting. I can't hold it and I have nowhere to put it down.

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Otto Dix Molly Brodak

In Exodus Moses is hidden

in a cleft, behind God’s hand, begging,

and he sees — rushing past him —  God’s back, diminishing.

Moses stops begging. God’s back is black fog.

I know. He, we guess, means to do it, to do all of this.

The brute center part of an iridescent moth.

The carnation against the man.

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ECLIPSE Linda Pastan

Moon, half rusted away in the sun's indomitable shadow,

I stand at the frosted window wrapped in a flannel robe

and see not what Galileo saw— a universe of planets spinning

like plates from the hands of a master juggler—

but you, our one moon, slender at times,

at times full as a breast brimming with milky light.

If the sun is a warrior in flaming armor,

the moon is a ghost disappearing,

leaving behind the merest trace of stars.