April 29, 2013
In an Artist’s Studio by Christina Georgina Rossetti One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. A queen in opal or in ruby dress, A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens, A saint, an angel — every canvas means The same […]
April 28, 2013
The novice who had some gold by Farid Attar (translated Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis) A novice hid a little store of gold. His sheikh knew this, although he’d not been told. There was a journey that they had to make — The two set out, the young man and his sheikh; Then night came […]
April 27, 2013
One More Hymn to the Sun by Lisel Mueller You know that like an ideal mother she will never leave you, though after a week of rain you begin to worry but you accept her brief absences, her occasional closed doors as the prerogative of an eccentric lover… You like the fact that her moods […]
April 26, 2013
Like a Manta Ray by James Tate I can swim the length of the public pool underwater. I like to swim right along the bottom with my eyes open, and sometimes I find things — a barrette, some change, a ring, a gold chain, some plastic spacemen, a comb, nothing too extraordinary. But this one […]
April 25, 2013
A Box of Pastels by Ted Kooser I once held on my knees a simple wooden box in which a rainbow lay dusty and broken. It was a set of pastels that had years before belonged to the painter Mary Cassatt, and all of the colors she’d used in her work lay open before me. […]
April 24, 2013
Television by Roald Dahl The most important thing we’ve learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set — Or better still, just don’t install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop […]
April 23, 2013
Sonnet CXXXVIII by William Shakespeare When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutored youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, […]
April 22, 2013
Spring by Tess Dinerstein Spring wakes up From her long slumber Just in time to wish Winter Goodnight She stretches And the sun comes Out to greet her Warming the earth.
April 21, 2013
a radio with guts by Charles Bukowski it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk and throw the radio through the window while it was playing, and, of course, it would break the glass in the window and the radio would sit out there on the roof still playing […]
April 20, 2013
Monet Refused the Operation by Lisel Mueller Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and […]