Adam O. Davis
Goodnight—Mary, Jane, Pat.
Sleep tight, you sweet operators
of America, your voices strung
like laundry across this nation
drowsy with a full century's worth
of light.
from the book
Index of Haunted Houses /
Sarabande Books
What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature in which we invite poets to explore experiences and ideas that spark new poems.
In Books We’ve Loved, we asked our editorial board members to reflect on a book that has been particularly meaningful to them in the last year, with the intention of creating a list of book recommendations for our valued readers.
- September 18, 2021
Hussain Ahmed
The sky is a rolag, carded with grief and dew.
We were made in the image of our dead –
because God relies on recycling
to keep the earth going around the sun.
- September 17, 2021
Katie Farris
Once, many
years ago, we made
love at a friend’s
house. We were over-
night guests, not
perverts (on the whole) . . .
- September 16, 2021
Shangyang Fang
Her cardamom-like nipples bloomed in the mahogany frame
of the mirror. She felt at ease. Perhaps she thought I was still
too young? That I was more of a boy than a man?
Or perhaps she saw that day, by the rosemary alley,
a boy kissing my lips. He tasted like blueberries.
- September 15, 2021
Paul Valéry (translated from the French by Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody)
I was waiting for who knows whom? (You? or day—or—)
A thought came.
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