There’s no end to the things they will show us, the reenactors on TV: falling off buildings, surviving wrecks, robbing a bank. These girls were best friends but one murders the other. This one has a tapeworm the length of a bus. Often, the show can’t afford for them to speak, so their stories are […]
Poetry
Pam Matz: As Snow
for P.M., 1920-2007 Until the end, which was sudden you were dying a long time and because I’d been casting my mind toward yours for years I was afraid I would go with you slide over the cliff being tied to you I haven’t yet arranged for the plaque next to the pathway under the […]
Maria Martin: Holding Pattern
It is difficult to describe objects anymore. As soon as I begin to describe an object, I see a woman alone on the telephone and then I fall asleep. The woman is losing her hair. She stands in and out of the light that falls from a kitchen window, not thinking of anything. It is […]
Michael Levan: Solu-Medrol
The man can only find words / to help his wife; he is unaccomplished / in so many ways that are useful to the world. / And sometimes he can’t even do that, but here, maybe, are these words / that stand for his hopes for her, for them, for the boy, / and the […]
Marcia LeBeau: Letter to Myself at Eighty
I hope you know you’re still lovely, with a tongue that can knot a maraschino cherry stem, then turn the world straight. Your wrinkled branches remain for you to dance in the wind. Remember, on your most ragdoll-of-days, you are holy. But why am I telling you this? Surely you know more now than I […]
Marcia LeBeau: After You Tell Me You and Your Wife Have “an Agreement”
I want to talk about everything except your agreement, here in my car where you’re taking up too much space. I want to look at your knees knocking my glove box as the branches of the Norwegian Maple vein the moon roof and think about what could have been if you had just kept your […]