sunt lacrimae rerum

before it spun to the floor. I watched another spit and flicker at the window, over and over. I wonder

if you spend enough time underground, do you recognize the sky when you reemerge? Does it feel

like cracking open? Does the sky make room for your return? The bees hum in unison above my head, wanting

what we all want: to become unhindered, vast, endless.

Sylvia Plath, “Ariel” and “The Colossus and Other Poems”

Margaret Atwood, “Morning in the Burned House” and “Interlunar”

Richard Siken, “Crush” and “War of the Foxes”

Linda Gregerson, “Prodigal: New and Selected Poems”

Anne Carson, “If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho” and “Nox”

W. B. Yeats, “The Collected Poems”

E.E. Cummings, “100 Selected Poems”

T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land and Other Poems”

Louise Glück, “Averno”

Carol Ann Duffy, “Mean Time”

Adrienne Rich, “The Dream of a Common Language”

“Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew”

Clementine von Radics, “Mouthful of Forevers”

Jeanann Verlee, “Said the Manic to the Muse” and “Racing Hummingbirds”

Elisabeth Hewer, “Wishing for Birds”