How to Know Hunger like the Kingfisher by Karen Elizabeth SharpeMake yourselfhigh on a perchplunge headfirstbelow muscled waves,a plummet of halcyon gashand dagger-shaped bill.30 feet or more. Pluck the silverslipper craving of fish.Fan your wings and rise.High on a...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? The first time I remember poetry making a deep impression on me was when I had the measles at age eight. My mother had them along with me, and we lay in her bed with...
Summer 2021 Cicadas Ellen Steinbaum They’re my last cicadas, though who can be sure, of course. Given my age and their infrequent outings,like scheduled comets and eclipses, they could be penultimate, but most likely my concluding swarm. Every seventeen...
In light of recent events, this week’s issue of The Hard Work of Hope will be a little different. We are always trying to offer poems that meet the moment, and the current crisis in Haiti—along with its long history of instability and the United States’ involvement in...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I’ve been a reader of poetry for my entire life. My parents read to me, but I was an early reader too, so I was able to take in A. A. Milne and Robert Louis Stevenson, for...
Love is a Battlefield, Literally, Because the Planet is on Fire Margot Douaihy & I’m too in love with this world & its creatures, even though it feels like I’m choking sometimes,burning in a mote of gold smoke, until I’m nothing, I’m a shadow licking the...
Refugee by Richard HoffmanA man carries his door,the door of his house,because when the war is overhe is going homewhere he will hang iton its hingesand lock it, tight,while he tries to rememberthe word for welcome.If his house is gonewhen he returns,he will raise it...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My first real encounter with poetry was in the 8th grade when, one day, I was called upon to stand next to my desk and read out loud to the rest of the class Part Two of The...
Elisa Rowe What is most important to your writing process? Doubt and wonder, equally. What about you comes across most in your writing? Maybe my sensitivity? To emotions, experiences, objects, how my senses process the world and the way it shapes me in big and...
Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read by Jill McDonoughCindy: not her real name. I met herin prison, and people in prison I givethe fake names. I taught her Shakespeare, rememberher frown, wide eyes, terror of gettingthings wrong. Her clear, arguable thesison Desdemona’s...
Mad Libs by Merryn RutledgeAs fall lumbers into winter,my grandson fills more and more of the blank spacesin our mad lib tales with hibernating bears.In COVID-crazy weekly callswe two hermits try to claim as comicthe incomparably absurd:Remote first grade--an...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? For the longest time, truth be told, I had no idea that I ever wanted to write poems: I had joined the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts as a fiction writer, and my...
What Anticipated Wonders We’d Have Summed by Thomas MixonWhat tallied courtesies, hedged bits of reaffirming pushnotifications we will never eat, foreverlodged between incisors of what could have been.I’ve found warm columns of an august Aprilwe will never live, next...
The Sky's Reflection by Amy ManionWhen will I let myself outside?My back faces the window; acomputer screen faces me.Barricaded in a glass cage.And there she is: with her piercingeyes. Still through glass she sees me. Featured in the Massachusetts Coalition for...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I think my first encounter with poetry was in nursery rhymes and jump-rope chants. Through them I learned about rhythm and rhyme. Then in high school, I fell in love with the...
Dreamed Weddingby Sarah Delice melts in boot treadsdrips onto the floor forming a puddle below the high table in the bar area empty, save for twograndparents, a six year-old...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I started studying poetry because I felt I knew nothing about it. I have an extensive background in American literature, and I made sure that when I began teaching at the college...
I overhear a boy humming "Jolene" while he practices long division by Carolyn Oliverand, sudden as a train’s blue note—I know I don’t deserve it—Dolly Parton becomes the president.The West Wing’s garlanded in rhinestones, fringedin bushels of Tennessee River...
Groundhogby Laura RodleyThe groundhog’s fur is silver, silkily rippling in the windas she chomps ends of grasses, clover, not yet have I seen her eat anything that causes consternation;she has scoured the walking path festoonedwith acorns that have...
How to Skip Stones by Ed MeekDo you remember keeping your eyes openfor flat, oval rocks to pocketon walks to the pond?Saving the best for last, you’d leanto one side and flick your wristflinging the stones just off the water.It isn’t easy to defy gravityand make a...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I only remember loving the idea of poetry as a kid, the little daydreamer I was. I wrote a bunch of poems before the age of ten, a couple of which were published...