Not-yet-published pieces, stories, essays, rants, and random strangenesses

“A Prayer for Us,” by Rob Brezny And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods . . . the God beyond all Gods . . . the...

Those who have died have never left The dead are not under the earth They are in the rustling trees They are in the groaning woods ...

Before you begin, please read this comment, and heed its advice. by Sylvia Plath As the gods began one world, and man another, So the...

by Edward Hirsch My father in the night shuffling from room to room on an obscure mission through the hallway. Help me, spirits, to...

I love limericks. I quite enjoy the off-color ones (the one about the lady from Brizes is probably my favorite), but I think I delight in...

Yves Bonnefoy (b. June 24, 1923) is a French poet and essayist, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher. His works have been of great...

This song was in my head a great deal this week. And by “in my head” I mean that every time I woke up in the night for four nights...

One reviewer called this poem “deceptively simple, direct, moving, and thoroughly astounding, full of political, religious, and cultural...

Inspired by classical Chinese hermit poets, David Budbill dispatches poems from his remote Vermont hermitage, Judevine Mountain, but...

I have officially achieved coffee Nirvana. A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Raven’s Brew Coffee Roasters, a marvelous coffee company...

The first poem I ever remember hearing, and certainly the first I ever memorized, was written by Laura Elizabeth Richards, born in 1850....

Today I am making miso soup. Authentic, from scratch, miso soup. And I’m making my own dashi, or soup stock, as well. No mean feat, you’d...

Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these...

I knew I was finished with the relationship when the individual for whom I had moved 450 miles away to be with, the one with Narcissistic...

Each Sunday I’m going to post a poem I like. Some will be short, some will be long. Some will be old favorites, some will be pieces I...