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Ladies and gents in rows of grim portraitsOn a high wall of your town house,Over a small cross and a music boxThat nowadays plays only silenceTo an audience of draped…

Eyebrows raised in surprise,He got into the habitOf talking to himselfAnd answering his own questionsIn a loud and angry voice. —Charles Simic Charles Simic's many books of poems include Come Closer…

The old couple are weedingSide by side in the garden,Their dog right behind themWagging his tail eager to help. Living in complete ignoranceOf what goes on in the worldIs the…

When the old clockThat woke the deadWith its loud tick fell silent,Eternity moved in.A mirror looked toward the doorWith eyes of a dogWho wanted to be takenOut for a walk.…

You, in a long black overcoat,Striding past meOn this busy streetAnd giving me the air,I have a hunchYou are the one who cracks the whipAround here and givesTwo-bit grippers like…

Of a crying womanWith her tears litBy the headlightsOf a passing car. —Charles Simic Charles Simic's many books of poems include Come Closer and Listen, Hotel Insomnia, My Noiseless Entourage, and The Lunatic.

Mark Singer

My mother, sure, everything I knowis from my mother. She told me stories aboutbeing a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhousein a prairie town so isolated her father and she droveright…

1 It was said to be terrible, her temper,but even more terrible was how she lost it—I mean lost itin the sense that trees lose leaves, in that after she…

in memoriam for my aunt, Pauline Thyfault After the viewing, they took her new false teeth,inhumanly gleaming, out of her mouth, then slidher body in the oven and turned up…