~
She didn't think they'd be staying home very much—there were so many places she wanted to take Leo—but she had in mind a scene of the two of them eating in bed. Did people really do that? It seemed as though there would be too much mess, nowhere to put your plate. Still, she liked the idea: the sleepy indulgence, the sheets streaked with light—the hour, in her imagination, was late afternoon, which may have been the reason for the beer, though this particular timing would require some planning, with everything else she wanted to do with him.
—From "Long Distance," a short story by Ayşegül Savaş, The New Yorker (January 31, 2022), pp. 50-55.
It's dusk on a Tuesday in June. A hot wind
bears down and east. In my room, a stranger's
hairclip lies like a gilded insect beside the sink.
—From "At a Days Inn in Barstow, California," a poem by Chloe Honum (Poem-a-Day, May 15, 2019, Academy of American Poets).
When the big clock at the train station stopped,
the leaves kept falling,
the trains kept running,
my mother's hair kept growing longer and blacker,
and my father's body kept filling up with time.
—From "Big Clock," a poem by Li-Young Lee (Poem-a-Day, December 8, 2021, Academy of American Poets).
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me . . .
—From "Hurry," a poem by Marie Howe, from her collection Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W. W. Norton, 2008). Her poem "My Dead Friends" was just published two days ago (Poem-a-Day, February 22, 2022, Academy of American Poets).
Behind the brick house next to us:
an indoor pool, enormous, used only
by invisible swimmers.
All winter the windows steam and clear.
—From "Neighbors," a poem by Laura Cherry, from her collection Haunts (Cooper Dillon Books, 2010), p. 35. It previously appeared in her chapbook, What We Planted, which was the winner of the 2002 Philbrick Poetry Award by the Providence Athenaeum. My other favorite from Haunts was "The Grownups Take Charge," the third part of a four-part poem, p. 70.