To the New Year by W.S. Merwin
"so this is the sound of you / here and now whether or not / anyone hears it"
Loyalties by Roo Borson
"Remember the long / mouthwatering days, each place / we rested, just taking it in."
I’ll Write the Girl by Jan Beatty
"& knows her life will always / be this biting open one thing / to leave another
You with the Crack Running Through You by Kim Addonizio
"But isn’t it drafty at night, / alone in that canyon / with the wind of the mind / dragging its debris—"
What it costs by Marge Piercy
"While / the heart kicks / like a strangled rabbit / and the lungs buckle / like poor balloons: / I will survive."
I Remember the Carrots by Ada Limón
"I loved them: my own bright dead things. / I’m thirty-five and remember all that I’ve done wrong."
From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee
"O, to take what we love inside, / to carry within us an orchard, to eat / not only the skin, but the shade, / not only the sugar, but the days
The Leash by Ada Limón
"But sometimes, I swear I hear it, the wound closing / like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move / my living limbs into the world without too much / pain
from East Coker by T.S. Eliot
"Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt / Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure"
Demand It Courageously by Julia Hartwig
"Make some room for yourself, human animal. / Even a dog jostles about on his master’s lap to / improve his position."