Handorable Me

🔥 Staring at the flames of the woodstove fire
🔥 guarded by its glass door, I’m trying to remember
🔥 what I’m good at—surprised when it occurs to me
🔥 I’m good at making this fire out of kindling
🔥 I’ve split, plus one piece of fir and two of oak, cut
🔥 from the large branches of the neighbor’s oak
🔥 that fell across the road two years ago
🔥 on a winter evening.

“Building a Fire,” Maxine Scates

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Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

💌 A desiccated daffodil.
💌 A pigeon cooing on the sill.
💌 The old cat lives on love and water.
💌Y our mother’s balanced by your daughter:
💌 one faces death, one will give birth.
💌 The fulcrum is our life on earth,
💌 beginning, ending in a bed.
💌 We have to marry love and dread.

“Love and Dread,” Rachel Hadas

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Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

😶 I heard them and I still hear them
😶 above the threatening shrieks of police sirens
😶 above the honking horns of morning traffic,
😶 above the home-crowd cheers of Yankee Stadium
😶 above the school bells and laughter
😶l ighting up the afternoon
😶 above the clamoring trudge of the 1 train
😶 and the 2 and 4, 5, 6, the B and the D . . .

“Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing” by Ariel Francisco

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Photo by Andi Rieger on Unsplash