"More Than Halfway," Edward Hirsch

[ninasafiri.livejournal.com]

I’ve turned on lights all over the house,
but nothing can save me from this darkness.

I’ve stepped onto the front porch to see
the stars perforating the milky black clouds

and the moon staring coldly through the trees,
but this negative I’m carrying inside me.

Where is the boy who memorized constellations?
What is the textbook that so consoled him?

I’m now more than halfway to the grave,
but I’m not half the man I meant to become.

To what fractured deity can I pray?
I’m willing to pay the night with interest,

though the night wants nothing but itself.
What did I mean to say to darkness?

Death is a zero hollowed out of my chest.
God is an absence whispering in the leaves.

Elsa You Swore On Your Deathbed -- Angela Veronica Wong

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

Elsa You Swore On Your Deathbed
by Angela Veronica Wong

Elsa you swore even on your deathbed—
other girls we might not believe but Elsa
you are extraordinary poems. Like a
series of bobby pins in an updo.
But even if you loved him. Even if
he loved you. Elsa, I had so much fun
dancing in Spain I might have never come
back. Their eyes on us made me a princess.
His chest and I wanted to love him. I
ate tortillas and olives. I tried on
three swimsuits in the airport. I drank two
glasses of water. I missed you and I
missed you. I love you and it is awful.
When I left they were dyeing eggs in the kitchen.

My Sister, Who Died Young, Takes Up The Task -- Jon Pineda

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

My Sister, Who Died Young, Takes Up The Task
by Jon Pineda

A basket of apples brown in our kitchen,
their warm scent is the scent of ripening,

and my sister, entering the room quietly,
takes a seat at the table, takes up the task

of peeling slowly away the blemished skins,
even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully.

She makes sure to carve out the mealy flesh.
For this, I am grateful. I explain, this elegy

would love to save everything. She smiles at me,
and before long, the empty bowl she uses fills,

domed with thin slices she brushes into
the mouth of a steaming pot on the stove.

What can I do? I ask finally. Nothing,
she says, let me finish this one thing alone.