The Open Window
By Poetry Issue 83
In Pierre Bonnard’s The Open Window the artist looks outward from his modest living room. It is summer, the heat baking the orange on the grill-like wall. To the right, a woman is resting in a chair, escaping as she can the sizzling midday air in which even her quizzical black cat blurs in the…
Read MoreAppeal to the Self
By Poetry Issue 83
Do you want to go back inside? the neighbor asks his small dun dog. Beauty, do you want to go inside? A long look at the tiny fluff, as if speech is imminent. As if anything is imminent. What would help you unpack the boxes? my therapist asks. Love. And I want an authentic relationship…
Read MoreEx Nihilo, Then Us
By Poetry Issue 83
From nothing God made everything, they said. Nothing plus God is nothing we said. But with something to work with, look what we’ve done. God said, you’d better and you’d better not, they said. And sometimes it looks like you have when you shouldn’t. Eyewash, we said, it’s just how we are, honeyed self-interest in…
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