Author: Ian Trimnell

Pantoum for Postpartum By Brittany Rogers I birth a child, and the wet wound never closes. My mother diagnoses postpartum casuallyas if saying — mail is here, and your name is on it. Explains the drilling is nothing I asked for, overripe nerves happen sometimes. My mother announces my postpartum casually, says in her day, black...

My favorite time is in time’s other side By Etel Adnan My favorite time is in time’s other side, its other identity, the kind that collapses and sometimes reappears, and sometimes doesn’t. The one that looks like marshmallows, pomegranates, and stranger things, before returning to its kind of abstraction. I used to be fond of time...

Soulwork by Tracy K. Smith One’s is to feed. One’s is to cleave. One’s to be doubled over under greed. One’s is strife. One’s to be strangled by life. One’s to be called and to rise. One’s to stare fire in the eye. One’s is bondage to pleasure. One’s to be held captive by power. One’s...

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde   For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at...

Silence by Billy Collins There is the sudden silence of the crowd above a player not moving on the field, and the silence of the orchid. The silence of the falling vase before it strikes the floor, the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child. The stillness of the cup and the...

Today by Billy Collins If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick...

On a dark night by St. John of the Cross   On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings –oh, happy chance!– I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised –oh, happy chance!– In darkness and in concealment, My house being now...

Love Doesn’t Need a Story By Alfred K. LaMotte  As you awaken, just before the mind of yesterday falls like a net of stones be weightless. Be presence without a story – How your soul looks in that mirror when it sees itself! What gets you out of bed, trembling like a wild purple iris in...

Words That Wait to Be Said By Jeanne Lohmann Having come to the place where I no longer wish to be anyone else, astonished to find I’ve traveled far enough to let the children go and put the old ladder of perfection away behind the other antiques in the barn, what needs me now is joy,...

The Waking By Theodore Roethke I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take...

I am not I. By Juan Ramon Jimenez I am this one walking beside me whom I do not see, whom at times I manage to visit, and whom at other times I forget; who remains calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when I hate, who walks where I am not, who will...

Words That Wait to Be Said By Jeanne Lohmann Having come to the place where I no longer wish to be anyone else, astonished to find I’ve traveled far enough to let the children go and put the old ladder of perfection away behind the other antiques in the barn, what needs me now is joy,...