by Danielle Deulen | Dec 30, 2018 | Lit from the Basement
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate...
by Danielle Deulen | Dec 23, 2018 | Lit from the Basement
Visitation by Mark Doty When I heard he had entered the harbor, and circled the wharf for days, I expected the worst: shallow water, confusion, some accident to bring the young humpback to grief. Don’t they depend on a compass lodged in the salt-flooded folds of...
by Danielle Deulen | Dec 16, 2018 | Lit from the Basement
Nightingale by Paisley Rekdal The boy sits at the kitchen table pointing through the window at the dark. There is a bird that comes at night, he says, that makes the most beautiful music. Steam off the edges of the field, the gray and brown and green of it and beyond...
by Danielle Deulen | Dec 9, 2018 | Lit from the Basement
Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space with Severed Umbilicus by Kaveh Akbar linebreak in Fort Wayne I drank the seniors Old Milwaukee Old Crow in Indianapolis I stopped now I regret every drink I never took all around ...
by Danielle Deulen | Dec 3, 2018 | Lit from the Basement
Visions and Interpretations by Li-Young Lee Because this graveyard is a hill, I must climb up to see my dead, stopping once midway to rest beside this tree. It was here, between the anticipation of exhaustion, and exhaustion, between vale and peak, my father came down...
