August 20 is the deadline to sign up for the online open mic August 23.
Nancy died in seventy-three
She was only twenty-three
She was a gamer
She was a good one
Green side up Knife goes in Cut it clean Top shell off Thumb on guts One smooth swipe
What if you wrote you are God’s elect, self-chosen
to bring order into a “new world,”
settled by natives seen as stray commas,
or apostrophes, in illiterate forests, a wilderness
hostile to your godly virtues of order and control,
a wilderness whose trees you fell to make
your home?
What if the few who traveled on the “sweet ship”
Mayflower,
In June my sister, Carole Cowan Dunscombe, died at the age of 51. My parents survived her as no parent should have to do. The timeliness of the Children’s Memorial at Edgartown Light couldn’t have been any better and my parents were able to have a stone placed there in her memory. Carole couldn’t get down to the lighthouse due to her wheelchair, however she spent many days looking out on the light from Memorial Wharf.
Budding
In our neighborhood the Russian Olive
Is first to extrude its buds.
Along its slender branches, and at their tips,
Ten thousand tiny commas and apostrophes
Suddenly appear in March.
Within them,
Deep down,
Are ten thousand unborn berries
That burst out in tart profusion
For me to gather on a September stroll,
To make my lips pucker in delight.
Preparing Oneself for Dying
Compulsively,
I strive to find a method
for a confrontation with what must be done
to save my children from the task of doing it when I die.
Make lists.
Make lists.
I sharpen pencils with an out-damn-spot intensity.
In shaded rooms,
on yellow pads,
I hide myself from sun
to settle my affairs:
