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A LETTER ON GRIEF TO MY DEAD BROTHER
I had to call our mother
To tell her you died.
She wasn’t responding to my texts or calls
So I had to call the nursing home where she worked
And have the nurse’s desk page her.
What’s going on, she asked immediately.
I told her to sit down.
She said Just tell me.
I said are you sitting down.
She said no, just tell me
As if the refusal to sit
Was some sort of protection
From what was coming.
I told her you were dead.
Our own mother.
I listened to her gasp
And let out a trembling ohhh
Right before the wail that turned my bones to rubber.
-
Tonight
by Andrea Gibson
Offer your body as a burning building
without fire escapes.I want to feel you like lifelines
on the palms of Christ
when the nails went through.Every week it feels like I fall in love with a new poet. This week, it’s A.G. I have been reading and re-reading this poem over and over in the last 24 hours. Do you know how I feel? Like I need to continue this sentence. Like I have something to add. Like I have something to say. <3
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Cosmos #5
their ice is all gone
swarm of them
still holds up
is a sight.
dark out here
special powers
gift of prophecy
spiral structure
titanic explosions so enormous
at the far edge
a little tug flung
plunging toward the sun
-
Cosmos #4
portents of doom
“bad star”
it meant war
calamity for the state.
two-edged sword
false pattern
hunger for significance
too eager, divine warning
we know space and time
cannot be seen.
swarm of worlds
gravity
ice and rock
birth
its existence
to die.
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Bang bang –
there you went,
ricocheting into space
your particles blown apart
like the stardust you returned to.
I imagine you
when I look at the sky –
one beautiful shock of light
hurtling through darkness.
I imagine
a child
a boy
a girl –
you were, I think, blessed
to be all three
the world too common
for your beauty.
(for Andrew. 1/9.17.)
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Cosmos #3
cosmic isolation
pattern recognition
passed on
the same stars
different pictures
this gift
messages written
with the rain
but a message
took it personally
imagine Earth
a spinning planet
sent by the gods.
-
Cosmos #2
maybe it was just
one last story
the greatest
life.
welcome
nobody knows
evidence was destroyed
not afraid
no shame
the evidence.
volcanic vents
unbroken thread
nearly 4 billion years ago
discern day from night
the things molecules do.
-
Cosmos #1
biggest winners were the dinosaurs
came crashing down
it could be
nameless corridor
can live in boiling water
intense radiation of space
live among the moss
five mass extinctions
we were wrong.
I want to take
may harbor life
unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
surface of Titan — four times denser,
no oxygen
we have to descend
hidden beneath
if it ever rains.
hundreds of lakes
rain feeds rivers
carve valleys
seas and rain
methane and ethane
natural gas
is frozen
water ice
too cold
life might swim in hydrocarbon lakes
inhale hydrogen,
oil-dark waves into the Kraken Sea
monster
tiny fraction
lights
see.
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When I run after what I think I want,
My days are a furnace of distress and anxiety;
If I sit in my own place of patience,
What I need flows to me,
And without any pain.From this I understand that
What I want also wants me,
Is looking for me
And attracting me;
When it cannot attract me
Any more to go to it,
It has to come to me.There is a great secret
In this for anyone
Who can grasp it.- Rumi
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Oberlin, revisited
Yellow moonlight bathes the forest clearing
while tiny erratic lights dance,
decorating the trees like Christmas in July.It made us immortal –
bare feet cushioned by feathers of grass
and the discarded clothing no longer needed by the divine.We slipped into the water, heads bobbing along a black mirror
listening to our laughter ring out
across the holler.
