When the Whales Leave
And I stand watching the sunset dipping gold and purple into the ocean and think about what it will be like when the whales leave—
Read the poemWriting · Poetry
Poetry
Poems shaped by the emotional register of experience—by place, memory, history, and the shifting edge of the sea.
How to Survive a Tsunami
The best way to survive a tsunami is to not be where it happens. This can be harder than you might think. We’re attracted to the wild,
Read the poem
The Time of the Fires
Plato insisted: no poets in the Republic. He feared the power they could assume, speaking of passions rather than rational order, of beauty and despair instead of virtuous behavior.
Read the poem
A Consolation Prize
It was Rachel who said, I love Emily Post. She asked me to tell her when the big white book filled with intricate orders of service arrived at the bookshop. You read Emily Post? I asked her, waiting
Read the poem
The Measure of Wealth
Wealthy property owners in my seaside town all love how quaint the houses are— then tear them down to make instead mansions with glass walls facing the sea. There is always construction here.
Read the poem
Before Fascism Came to America
Before fascism came to America, I imagined lives lived surreptitiously, resistance fighters drinking harsh red wine in stone-flagged kitchens at night by flickering firelight;
Read the poem
Sleeping in Moonlight
And now, with the darkness, the ghosts arrive. My mother, dead these many years, a shadow fluttering in the moonlight: on these endless nights it is her voice I hear. I try not to listen. I wander instead as disconnected as the ghosts themselves through empty echoing rooms in my mind.
Read the poem
Unforgotten
I live now, in my late middle age, in a seaside town I’ve chosen because it is a place where I do not lock my door. This was not always the case.
Read the poem
I Thought I Saw an Angel
I thought I saw an angel once, the air alive with the beating of ethereal wings whispers of a world yet to be born out of the dustbins and doubt of our own. Given by God, or astronomical event— it doesn’t matter: I saw hope. I saw
Read the poem
Winter Storm Warning
I have been in too many cemeteries, read too many headstones, wept with too many grieving stone angels. You must understand: I’ve often thought of killing myself. It’s a long and honored tradition. I live in a place they call land’s end: I think a lot about the beyond. Beyond
Read the poem
Looking Up My Ex on Google
I hear people look up their exes on Google. I have an ex, too: it’s the convent I once called my home. Then, the nuns were hundreds strong (not including those deployed
Read the poem
What Migrants Leave Behind
They keep the objects collected in plastic bags. A museum of dead things, a compilation of objects used to sustain life where life is no longer. Forced to leave home, what do you decide to take? A comb, a jackknife, a religious medal A pen, a Boston Red Sox cap
Read the poem
This Thing of Darkness
Ekartic poem written to reflect art from the permanent collection of the Cape Cod Museum of Art.
Read the poem
Surviving
At home in the country of my childhood, I went to the markets and saw the numbers tattooed on skin become old, a sleeve falling back from a forearm, the ink of the camps faded and wrinkled. That was when I stopped telling people I’d survived a test, or an awkward
Read the poem
The School Shooter
And on a night like any other night, when the barkeep cut him off when the girlfriend cut him loose when his only option was a razor under a flickering florescent light—
Read the poem
13 Symptoms of Peace Corps Withdrawal
And at the end of his contract he comes back from the heat the pulse of the land the baobab trees, the savannah the rhythms of the drums— from the fever dreams of Malawi.
Read the poem
Yarnell Eulogy
Hotshot. They say you have to love it a little to hate it so much and on a day like any other day a fire like any other fire surrounded and took you: burnover, they call it, when there’s no place to go but into the flames. Watching the fire come nearer and you’re already closer to it than anyone else would dare, hotshot,
Read the poem
Mississippi Solstice
Celebrate this day as solstice, the beginning of sunshine summer that brings life to this tourist town long bright days lengthening into sunsets, the smell of suntan oil and frying food but the sun always sets,
Read the poem
Out of a Burning Plane
The man in the seat ahead is impatient. Not fast enough, he says. The wrong brand of Scotch. The flight attendant keeps smiling, even though she’s been up eighteen hours, hearing him complain for the past five.
Read the poem
The Quilt Maker
My mother (dying of cancer, smoking until her last breath), angry about research dollars: those people don’t deserve it. They brought this on themselves. She never saw the irony.
Read the poem