The Secret of Youth by Micah Daniels Last night I asked my mother to cornrow my hairA skill I had been practicing since last summerBut always ended with a tumbleweed excuse of a braid My black has always resided in braidsIn tango fingers that work through tanglesTranslating geometry from hands to head For years my …

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And what if the wilderness… by Ross Gay And what if the wilderness — perhaps the densest wild in there — thickets, bogs, swamps, uncrossable ravines and rivers (have I made the metaphor clear?) — is our sorrow? Or, to use Smith’s term, the ‘intolerable.’ It astonishes me sometimes — no, often — how every …

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Some Things I Like by Lemn Sissay “I like wrecks, I like ex-junkies,I like flunks and ex-flunkies,I like the way the career-less career,I like flat beer,I like people who tell half stories and forget the rest,I like people who make doodles in important written tests, I like being late. I like fate. I like the …

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The Small by Theodore Roethke The small birds swirl around;The high cicadas chirr;A towhee pecks the ground;I look at the first star:My heart held to its joy,This whole September day. The moon goes to the full; The moon goes slowly down; The wood becomes a wall. Far things draw closer in. A wind moves through …

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From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee From blossoms comesthis brown paper bag of peacheswe bought from the boyat the bend in the road where we turned toward   signs painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands,from sweet fellowship in the bins,comes nectar at the roadside, succulentpeaches we devour, dusty skin and all,comes the familiar dust of summer, dust …

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