Lisel Mueller

Moon Fishing When the moon was full they came to the water. some with pitchforks, some with rakes, some with sieves and ladles, and one with a silver cup. And they fished til a traveler passed them and said, “Fools, to catch the moon you must let your women spread their hair on the water […]

Cristina García

I wish I could live underwater. Maybe then my skin would absorb the sea’s consoling silence. — Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban. (Ballantine Books, June 8, 2011) Originally published 1992.

Rachel Wetzsteon

In the handed-down inventory of love’s habits we find images of lowering: down at the mouth, down on the knees, prostrate with the shock of the marvelous. Contact more than shame-faced with the elevated figure is therefore impossible; hazard more than a bow, and a trapdoor opens beneath you; offer a hand, and see love […]

Virginia Woolf

Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I dream; I dream. — Virginia Woolf, The Waves. (Harvest Books 1978) Originally published October 8th 1931.

Franz Wright

And every day I’ll try to do one thing I like, in memory of being happy. — Franz Wright, from “Father Roger Goes for a Walk,” God’s Silence. (Knopf; 1st Edition edition, March 21, 2006)