Heather Christle
A title can
do many kinds
of work. In
some cases it
acts as a label
for its contents
as when my
sister's husband's
grandmother
(a simpler title
is Fran) wrote
on a small
cardboard box
the word PINS
which named
the sharp lines
she kept inside
whose work
includes holding
cloth together
and taking little
pricks of blood
from a hand.
When she moved
into the nursing
home they kept
her belongings
in the basement
of my sister
waiting for
something
to change and
when Fran died
and my sister
went down
to the basement
with her child
to be among
the things that
remained she
opened the box
and the pins
all spilled to
the floor and
when my sister
is gathering lines
in her hand
which yesterday
held Fran's
the box is still
titled PINS but
now it is doing
different work.
from the journal THE RUMPUS
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Cover of Hilary Holladay's new biography of Adrienne Rich
"Waiting for the Poetry"

"It’s this that makes her so relevant today–when otherwise comfortable people live in thrall to newsfeeds and phone alerts. Rich’s Collected Poems is a century’s compendium of emergencies, telegraphed in proper nouns: Mississippi, Harpers Ferry, Jaurez, Catalonia, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Central America, Lebanon."

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Yona Harvey on Lauren Russell's Descent

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