The letter came back from the post office so mangled
it was as if the mailman had plucked it out of my box
before being jumped by a clot of street thugs.
Then, still carrying his mail bag, stumbled into a bar
because it was the third time this is year that he'd gotten jumped
in my neighborhood, and why do guys gotta pick on him
just because he's short (under five-six don't make a man,
his father always said). Then drank scotch and soda
until the bartender made him stop, walked the dimming
summer streets in search of his truck, slept in a doorway,
woke up and vomited into his mailbag, found his truck
and skulked home to his wife, who had sent all four children
to the neighbors and was waiting up in yesterday's clothes,
with a suitcase and a left hook brewing. Because she hated
the late hours the USPS forced him to carry, and by "late hours"
they both know she meant his cheating with the tiny
Castilian woman two zip codes over, and this thought
that poisoned her days now propelled her to stomp on his mailbag
and kick it off the porch for all that the mailbag stood for:
the overtime, the philandering, the childless Castilian
with the twenty-two inch waist. But then when she saw his face
with his eyebrows tipped and sorry, and she knew
that he hadn't been sneaking around, but had gotten into trouble,
she sat him down, fed him coffee, and washed his wounds
before sending him back out for his morning shift,
because they both needed him to keep this job
(there was a pension attached, she had secretly started divorce
proceedings, was hungry for the alimony).
And so he got back to work and wiped off the fouled, wretched
letters in his bag, feeding them through the system
before getting called into the supervisor's, and because
the letter was wet, it got mangled in the maw of a sorting machine,
the address smeared and clotty, the stamp curled and dystonic,
and three weeks later, once the mailman was off probation,
the letter came back to him, smelling like machine oil and vomit,
clawed and shredded, stamped "Return to Sender,"
and he shoved it back in my mailbox with bite marks
from the beast that had mauled it, this letter to my father
on his deathbed, explaining why I wouldn't be going to see him.
from the journal NEW OHIO REVIEW
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Portrait of William Wordsworth
Wordsworth Treasures Return to Rydal Mount

"A treasure trove of newly discovered items belonging to William Wordsworth, one of England’s greatest poets, have been given to his Lake District home by his descendants....For many devotees, perhaps the most startling new arrival is the Wordsworth family Bible, featuring in copperplate writing the date of his parents John and Ann’s wedding day, and the birth and christening dates of all their children, including William and Dorothy."

via THE GUARDIAN
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What Sparks Poetry:
Jenny Browne on Jane Mead’s “The Lord and The General Din of the World”

"Can a description of an empty bottle of blue cheese dressing change your life? I wouldn’t have wagered it, but I never forgot that “steady grating” and how Mead’s poem pointed the way forward. Because I didn’t know you could put stuff like that in a poem, by which I mean the stuff my actual life felt made of, let alone hold it right next to God, whoever she was. I had thought being a poet meant I had to learn to write (and see) like Rilke, but now I thought maybe I might try to be (and listen) like Jane Mead."
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