For My Friends, in Reply to a Question by Safia Elhillo
“in my dreams / I am touching the faces of my friends, we are / each one of us touching” — Safia Elhillo
Lord I Thought at Least You’d Be Here by Elizabeth Metzger
“When I lay next to you in life / only you had the life.” — Elizabeth Metzger
Mission by A.R. Ammons
"as if anything here belonged to you / as if anything here were your concern"
If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet by Hanif Abdurraqib
"I am a simple man. I want, mostly, / a year that will not kill me when it is over."
I Am Not Ready To Die Yet by Aracelis Girmay
"I want to live longer. / I want to love you longer, say it again, / I want to love you longer / & sing that song / again."
Any Common Desolation by Ellen Bass
"You may have to break / your heart, but it isn’t nothing / to know even one moment alive."
Imagine Sisyphus Happy by Nicole Sealey
"But birds / pluck their own feathers, dogs / lick themselves to wound. Allow me this / luxury. Give me tonight to cut / and salt the open."
Endings by Derek Walcott
"even love’s lightning flash / has no thunderous end, // it dies with the sound / of flowers fading like the flesh"
Encounter by Czeslaw Milosz
"O my love, where are they, where are they going / The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles."