Ornithology
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was a child. Mother on the front porch, watering flowers. Daddy on the couch, book fallen to the floor. Too young for words, I know nothing of their worlds. Ornithology. Site fidelity. Geraniums. Faith. I know nothing yet of the split between science and God, between men and women, between want and need. Home is a set of sensory perceptions: the rough-smooth texture of my father’s wool socks; bright red tomatoes on the windowsill; my mother humming “Abide With Me” as flowers outside remain abundant, carrying full green leaves.
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
What We Hear from our Neighbors
Michael and Sara supervised their neighbor once from their living room window as he cut down a hundred-foot tree alone. Both the maples and the neighbors in that part of Vermont come in one size. Double-XL for the trees. Extra-small talk for the neighbors.
Two Poems
My aluminum-free/deodorant is made/of charcoal. Iterative/self-perceptions slam/into one another with/the incongruity of/perched hummingbirds.
A Review of G.C. Waldrep’s THE EARLIEST WITNESSES
Hailed by his contemporaries as a visionary poet, G.C. Waldrep aptly presents an intimate study of the literal, physical, and spiritual act and implications of seeing.
A Review of Jennifer Militello’s THE PACT
If you are someone like me who usually – but not always – closes her correspondence to friends and family with the word “love,” Jennifer Militello’s “The Pact” (Tupelo Press) might make you want to think about what it means when you use – or withhold – that word.
Four Poems
As they were lowering/his coffin in to the ground/beside my mother’s grave/where the grass had regrown–
Welcome Stephen Cramer as our new Assistant Poetry Editor!
The GMR is thrilled to announce that Stephen Cramer will be joining us as Assistant Poetry Editor. We look forward to working even more closely with Stephen.
But Then I Turned Into My Evil Twin: Kindness and Ecstasy
“I am so desperate for that vaccine/I’d knock down an old person/to get it,” someone once said.
Poemed
sky-blue-prison/prism of spin-back-earth
A Review of NO MORE TIME by Greg Delanty
Have you heard of the scurfpea, quagga, aye-aye, or the northern gastric frog? Greg Delanty’s new book of poems, No More Time, is filled with such exotic creatures, and more familiar ones, too. In some cases, they are thriving. Many others are either extinct or endangered, facts weighted with an awareness of humans’ role in their plight.