Northampton Style ~ Marie Ponsot Evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer Northampton-style, on the porch out back. Its voice touches and parts the air of summer, as if it swam to time us down a river where we dive and leave a single track as evening falls. Someone’s playing a dulcimer that lets us wash […]
A Double Standard ~ Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Do you blame me that I loved him? If when standing all alone I cried for bread a careless world Pressed to my lips a stone. Do you blame me that I loved him, That my heart beat glad and free, When he told me in the […]
Bound for Hell ~ Marina Tsvetaeva Translated from the Russian by Stephen Edgar Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured, Is where we’re bound; we’ll drink the pitch of hell— We, who have sung the praises of the lord With every fiber in us, every cell. We, who did not manage to devote Our nights to […]
The Garden by Moonlight ~ Amy Lowell A black cat among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still, It is dazed with moonlight, Contented with perfume, Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. Firefly lights open and vanish High as the […]
Trailer Park Études ~ Conor O’Callaghan The nights midweek are secrets kept. No soul on site, no signal/bars, and zilch for company except a zillion bright disarming stars. I’ll flit through ambers, quicker, higher. I’ll break each hamlet’s stop or yield. I’ll fix some noodles, start a fire and climb up to the topmost field. The stars at […]
