Unstrung, by Ada Cambridge (1844-1926) My skies were blue, and my sun was bright, And, with fingers tender and strong and light, He woke up the music that slept before— Echoing, echoing evermore! By-and-by, my skies grew grey;— No master-touch on the harp-strings lay,— Dead silence cradled the notes divine: His soul had wander’d away […]

Farming in a Lilac Shirt, by Leo Dangel (1941-) I opened the Sears catalog. It was hard to decide-dress shirts were all white the last time I bought one, for Emma’s funeral. I picked out a color called plum, but when the shirt arrived, it seemed more the color of lilacs. Still, it was beautiful. No […]

Suppose in Perfect Reason, by Howard Griffin (1915-1975) Suppose in perfect reason you want to die, you want earnestly knowing for years the meaning you want above all to die — recall the eager, the blonde beavers who died in shelterhalves of steel or ground like coral to reefs where there was no choice. Life defines […]

Late Wisdom, by George Crabbe (1754-1832) We’ve trod the maze of error round, Long wandering in the winding glade; And now the torch of truth is found, It only shows us where we strayed: By long experience taught, we know– Can rightly judge of friends and foes; Can all the worth of these allow, And […]

An Evening Meal, by Celia Gilbert, (1932-) I take out a heaping plate of beans, slice one tomato in glorious cartwheels. Love apple. I’m expecting your call. What we’ll say will be ordinary; when we hang up, “I love you,” an exchange of equivalents but not exactly.  We’ve always gone about it in character — I, […]

Eden, by Ina Rousseau (1923-2005) Somewhere in Eden, after all this time, does there still stand, abandoned, like a ruined city, gates sealed with grisly nails, the luckless garden?   Is sultry day still followed there by sultry dusk, sultry night, where on the branches sallow and purple the fruit hangs rotting?   Is there […]

Gretel in Darkness, by Louise Gluck (1943-) This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead are dead. I hear the witch’s cry break in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar: God rewards. Her tongue shrivels into gas. . . .                Now, far from women’s arms and memory […]

Appetite, by Rynn Williams (1961-2009) The merest suggestion of mouth and I was ravenous—I filled the house with chocolate, chestnuts, strudel, blood sausage; I bathed in butter.   A glimpse of tongue and I was undone, simply a hint of heavy cream and the wax came off in a greasy slab, there were no cauldrons […]

I Sit and Sew, by Alice Dunbar-Nelson [née Moore] (1875-1935) I sit and sew—a useless task it seems, My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams— The panoply of war, the martial tread of men, Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death, Nor learned to […]

When the Night and Morning Meet, by Dora Greenwell (1821-1882) In the dark and narrow street, Into a world of woe, Where the tread of many feet Went trampling to and fro, A child was born — speak low! When the night and morning meet.   Full seventy summers back Was this, so long ago, […]