If her father were here
with those hands that knew
how to coax stories
from wood, we’d ask him
to carve her in cedar
as Raven Stealing the Sun,
which he could then saw
into sections the size
of a greengrocer’s thumb,
then fit them back together
with intricate joins, cunning
latches, so those who loved her
might take her apart,
each of us bearing the art
in a curve of wing, a small motif
of feather, a clear & clever
eye, a portion of beak,
until all that’s left
is the brilliant berry of light
she brought us—
if her father hadn’t gone
into darkness before her,
if she hadn’t already
given herself away
one thoughtful offering
at a time.
What Keeps Us
Poems to Read in Community
Inspired by C. D. Wright’s poem “What Keeps,” we offer Samuel Green’s “Talisman,” as part of a twenty-poem selection from poems we’ve featured in 2024—poems, like bread, that one might pass across the table—to a loved one, or to oneself.
Read editor Lloyd Wallace’s introduction to the collection and statements from our staff readers here. Read poems by selecting below.
Throwback Night, Midway Skating Rink
The sun dipped already, but we sweating, edges ribboned under
summer’s breath.
My Father Walks Out of an English Book and Into an English Field
It was not long after the war—
and just saying after the war places him
Half-Life in Exile
I’m forever living between Aprils.
The air here smells of jacarandas and lime;
Country Song (Memory of Rain)
A bruise is a promised haunting.
“Come, just this once,” I ask, disingenuously. I mean “a thousand times.”
At the Gellert Baths, Budapest
Here in the body museum,
women speaking Hungarian
rinse one another with buckets of water,
As Though It Were a Small Child
I wake up these days, a new mother again, watching,
waiting, to understand what to offer, how to serve, by which I
mean,