A graphic novel by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault, and four poems

~
My dad cries.
I don't mean right now as we speak,
even though that's probably the case.
I don't mean that my dad (noun) cries (verb) watching the sun set (adverb phrase), either.
What I mean is, my dad cries.
A dog barks.  A cat meows.  My dad cries.
Truffle thinks it's because he loves us too much.
There's some truth to that. 
But between you, me and the bus driver, 
you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that if my dad cries, 
it's first and foremost because of the wine. 
--From Louis Undercover, a graphic novel by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault, translated from the French by Christelle Morelli and Susan Ouriou (Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, Toronto, Ontario/Berkeley, California, 2017).  First published in French as Louis parmi les spectres (Les Éditions de la Pastèque, Montreal, Quebec, 2016). 

I was on the porch pinching back the lobelia
like trimming a great blue head of hair. 

We'd just planted the near field, the far one 
the day before.  I'd never seen it so clear,

so gusty, so overcast, so clear, so calm.
They say pearls must be worn or they lose their luster, . . .  
--From "Another Story with a Burning Barn in It," a poem by Lisa Olstein, on the website of the Poetry Foundation.  This is an excerpt from her collection Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006). 


I'm six months along 
and I wonder why nobody 
told me.  I've got red wine 
in my right hand, a cigarette
in my left.  There's
a noisy party all 
around me.  I put down 
the glass and lift my shirt.
The baby's there, visible 
under my transparent
skin, a little girl, wearing
bluebird barrettes.
--From "Expecting," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, from her collection Sun in Days (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), pp. 39-40.  This poem was first published, as "Nightdream," in Issue 58 of Tin House.

You can only miss someone when they are still present to you.
--From "Mistaken Self-Portrait as Demeter in Paris," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, from her collection Sun in Days (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), pp. 84-85.  This poem was first published, as "Demeter in Paris," by the Academy of American Poets.

What you did wasn't so bad.
You stood in a small room, waiting for the sun.
At least you told yourself that.
I know it was small, 
but there was something, a kind of pulped lemon, 
at the low edge of the sky.
--From "Poem of Regret for an Old Friend," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, from her collection Sun in Days (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), pp. 86-87.  "Poem of Regret for an Old Friend" was first published in The New Yorker.

Four poems and two short stories

~
The daughter wakes to a world
encased in ice--
the pine trees stiff with it.
--From "Still," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, from her collection Once (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), pp. 85-87.

It is a green landscape, houses stalwart
as circus ponies, American houses, wet
kids moving through them in Spandex bathing suits; 
inside, sandwiches with crusts cut off, 
windows flung open and striped awnings rolled out; 
family portraits on the walls and generic
medicines in the cabinet: the middle classes.
--From "Twenty-first Century Fireworks," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in The Kenyon Review and reprinted in her collection Once (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), pp. 17-18.

Who will remember us
when the light breaks
over the western valley 

and the trash stirs, 
the flood having come
with its red waters

and washed our graves away?
I was a person, 

once, I believe. . . .
--From "Churchyard," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in Tin House (Issue number 49, Fall 2011) and reprinted in her collection Once (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), pp. 45-46.

There was once a young wife, the apple of her husband's eye.  She was beautiful and charming and intelligent, and had been to college as well, a rare achievement for women in those days.
--From "The Maid Servant's Story," a short story by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, from her collection Arranged Marriage (Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1995), pp. 109-168.

Did you folks have a quarrel, asked the policeman, looking up from his notepad with a frown, and the husband looked directly back into his eyes and said, No, of course we didn't.  
--From "The Disappearance," a short story by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, from her collection Arranged Marriage (Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1995), pp. 169-181.

I am staying at a house with a screened-in back porch.  
--From "This Is Classy Because I Say So," a poem by Meg Johnson, published in Bear Review (Volume 2, Issue 1), p. 10.

Halflife, a collection of poems by Meghan O'Rourke

~
The blue square of light
in the window across the street
never goes dark--

the cathodes, the cordage, the atoms
working the hem of dusk--
traveling past the cranes and the docks

and the soiled oyster beds, 
the trees loaded with radium, 
colors like guns, 

. . . 

I came through the sodium streets
past the diners, a minister idly turning his glass, 
service stations, gas, cars sharp in the light.

How long will the light go on?
Longer than you.  Still you ought to live like a city, 
rich and fierce at the center.

--From "Halflife," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in the magazine Poetry (September 2005) and reprinted in her collection Halflife (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 23-24.