A cold winter day spent reading, collecting tinder. But, my god, the loneliness of the hours was overwhelming. With age it becomes more and more apparent that I need to be among people. I have to stop living like a monk. Although, it is true, monks do live with other monks. They pray, take their meals together, and perhaps life at the monastery is not such…

Here is the mouth to kiss and tell you lies   Here are the arms to hold you and push you away   We can find you feet for dancing Ears for music and late night phone calls Hair to wrap like a scarf when your neck is cold Hands to write you a story…

Another year gone, leaving everywhereits rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, the uneaten fruits crumbling damplyin the shadows, unmattering back from the particular islandof this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere except underfoot, molderingin that black subterranean castle of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seedsand the wanderings of water. This I try to remember…

All night the sound had    come back again, and again falls this quiet, persistent rain. What am I to myself that must be remembered,    insisted upon so often? Is it that never the ease,    even the hardness,    of rain falling will have for me something other than this,    something not so insistent— am I to…

How she tears it apart when she needs to be seen, says look at me look at me  and if not at me at least this wet blood is interesting, right. How I still tear at things when I want to be seen, saying look at me look at me and if not at me…

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,…

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbitwho died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair:a pink rabbit: it was my birthday, and a candleburnt a sore spot on my finger,…

Sits beside me and feels bad about taking up the space.Wants desperately to be heardand does not want to talk.Rides alongside me everywhere I go, occupies a whole seat on the tram,or sometimes sits in my purseand wants to be read instead of a book.Is insistent, is unbearable.Says, "yes yes but now back to me!"and it is not…

by Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster:places, and names, and…

A kiss can be a bite,or a touch a scratch,from caress to crush.How some pain is good,is more real. How it says,Be here now. The endless ride is quieted for a moment,the loud rush turnsto sudden flushblood beads to the surfaceand everything else is trivial Nails dragged across soft skin,teeth to the jugular,muscles stretched to snap.How we can be animals,instinct-driven. How we listento ourselves finally.…