gather them & give them back to me by Renia White
“so your hand isn’t in mine, but I feel / it there—when I am asleep, awake, inside my mind room.” — Renia White
spell for reclaiming the moment by adrienne maree brown
“we could be another’s blessing / with our brief and epic lives” — adrienne maree brown
Grace by Cecilia Woloch
“when I think of how you stand / as if with nothing in your hands” — Cecilia Woloch
Dieter with the Tulips, Munich, 1984 (Nan Goldin) by Alisha Dietzman
“Most days, we are suspended / over a deep pool of silence.” — Alisha Dietzman
A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal by Billy Collins
“Most days, we are suspended / over a deep pool of silence.” — Billy Collins
The Whole of It by Helen Meneilly
“You have come so far / to love your little life so much / that you would not trade a single scar.” — Helen Meneilly
What birds plunge through is not the intimate space by Rainer Maria Rilke
"It has no limits. Not till it is held / in your renouncing is it truly there." — Rainer Maria Rilke
Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear by Gwendolyn MacEwen
"All I have ever cared about / And all you should ever care about / Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page." — Gwendolyn MacEwen
Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara
"I look / at you / and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in / the world" — Frank O'Hara
What We Need is Here by Wendell Berry
"And we pray, not / for new earth or heaven, but to be / quiet in heart, and in eye, / clear." — Wendell Berry