Dave Smith

Isn’t it right to drag the rivers for the bodies not even the nets could catch? I won’t lie, I want you to lie with me on the tumbling surface of love. This is the place to honor crab song, reed’s aria, where every hour the mussel sighs, Begin again. Say I am water and […]

Mary Oliver

… I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple – or a green field – a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing – an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness – wonderful as that part of it is. I […]

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 […]