Browse Topics

The Door

She climbed the little trail to her cabin, her mind weary, each step pulling at her energy. But the sight of the door took her breath away. Something filled her, swept through her body singing. She went toward it slowly, then ran her two hands over every inch.

Selected Poems

My Car

An unraveling marriage, a phobic non-driver, a father’s permission

Selected Poems

Tonight the trees bend over like broken / old women picking up their husbands’ / empty whiskey bottles.

— from “Drunk Again, I Stumble Home On Euclid And Cut Across Thornden Park Baseball Field”

Talk

My father brought Jake’s body home from Colorado in a record-breaking blizzard.

Siren’s Song

Solitude seems possible; the sea and sky are wedged into the cove by two walls of volcanic rock. The horizon is broken only by an occasional sail.

Lipstick

Cherries In The Snow, Plush Purple, Orange Flip

Fifty Guilders

I sat by myself on the train from Copenhagen. In the middle of the night, the door to my compartment opened. A young woman wearing a ponytail, a T-shirt, and a dark blue suit eyed me stretched out on the seat, my gray hair curled over my collar. Then she decided to come in. She heaved her baggage into the overhead rack, shut the door, and stretched out on the opposite seat.

June 1992

The Map I Was Promised

Things I didn’t get to last week: answering the mail, giving up coffee, saving the planet.

Mother

Having to choose, clutching a doll, finding it hard to say goodbye