Thirty Years’ Creeper War
Into its roots I thrust my spade, each spring, to kill it where it cloaks and climbs my lovely house, and chokes all other green things there arrayed. With my bare hands I pull new shoots before they batten and start to braid themselves into a wild cascade. I never manage to kill the roots….
Book Release: The Commonwealth by Dan Rattelle
We are excited to announce the release of Dan Rattelle’s new chapbook, The Commonwealth. Written, in large part, during his time studying in St Andrews, Scotland with the poet Don Patterson, The Commonwealth looks across the sea toward Rattelle’s home of Massachusetts for inspiration. The craftsman and craftsmanship that remains in our technological age provides…
Upon These Boughs Which Shake Against the Cold
Her script was always lovely and unique, And still unique when it began to wobble, Along with spoken words. Increasing trouble With memory made her less inclined to speak. But still, she wrote her letters. Before we’d started school, she’d made us readers: Books were our favorite toys; once every week We’d take some back…
THE HERMIT HEARS OWLS
Two of them are talking in the woods. The night’s so still and bright with moon that he Lies staring on his pillow. Almost, it’s words He hears tossed back and forth from tree to tree. Almost, it’s wind whose wings slip past the window, Wavering the light. Almost, it’s silence, Almost ghost. From bed…
Basilique du Sacre-Coeur
The steps of the Sacre-Coeur billow down the hill like a robe, and hundreds loiter on the hem, maybe hoping to be healed. Church steps have cradled them for centuries—the crippled, the homeless, the lost tourists, the tired pedestrians—but here at this place are three hundred steps instead of five or ten. The loiterers…
A Prayer for Split Men
Almighty God, To whom all restless hearts are open All old desires known And from whom no guilty secrets are hid Of thy great mercy, Regard the split men. Regard the man Who still dreams Christian dreams, Who cannot pass a chapel Except he enters in, Who cannot hear a carol Except he joins the…
Haven
We saw it sink; the tides took it, the tug of oars between the strand and formlessness that left the sands forlorn; out past the wrack, beyond the harbour-walls’ embrace, the embers ebbed to black. Listen, the land is locked in silence; waves and waders moved as one to cede the shore; the godwits gone,…
ANGHENFIL
People say there are no longer any ogres left in the world, but it is not true. I have a friend in a distant country who was afflicted by one for some years. Bran had amassed a great collection of historical and artistic material on behalf of his nation and was famous for his work…
On Dying
Where, O Death, is your sting? If we increase the IV Morphene bolus You won’t feel a thing. There is nothing painful or hateful About this death. Cast your anxieties on Him — Be anxious for nothing. Or X units of…
Joseph’s Suspicion
by Rainer Maria Rilke The angel spoke to him and took great pains to reach the man, whose hands were tightly balled: “But don’t you see that in her every fold she is as cool as God’s own early morn?” Yet back at him the other darkly stared, muttering just “What’s made this change in…