Explore
Heartache & Lossexpand_moreDevanand Simon was twenty-five when the bodies fell from the sky.
When you are sixteen and sixty-five pounds, you are all shadows.
The old man drinks some more liquor and whacks down two trees.
I was thinking sex, she was thinking sex, but neither of us made a move.
Snows piling in his crying mouth. Cold gave him a light complexion.
Had I always known this would happen? There had been no signs.
He longed only for Claire’s strange seriousness, her silent focus.
I couldn’t love the tree in every soul shouldering its own tiny autumn.
My father made me watch softball on ESPN 2 to help me stay alive.
He fell to the floor and begged the gods. The gods were silent.
I recoil from the certitude that religion can give a person; it’s horrific.
Refuge, Your church is often a house. Your Word is a house.
Underestimate the beauty in the world and spill coffee down your shirt.
Many times I’ve stood at the lip of this river and wanted to crawl in.
Even before bills and rent and adultery—you don’t sleep well.
The appendix on political correctness explains why none of that is funny.
I had the tongue of an adder and my heart was black with rage and hate.
You are afraid pain itself might develop a way to communicate.
In every pair, one shoe smells of exodus, the other of the body’s sweat.
The first time I met you I fought your father in the driveway.
I want to cut loose from her each wistful sigh I hear escape her lips.
His fingers traveling through these notes can assuage, I think, all pain.
Poems and stories are the whisperings of angels we cannot see.
Their mother was the real beauty of the family, or so everyone said.
When I land we argue over the little hazards a marriage is made of.
When I say I’ve seen a man die, what I mean is many and always.
I tell him: junkies are the only people worth talking to about love.
Her name sprang to my lips in strange prayers and praises.
I tried mightily, but no longer could I ladle those ancient words into the air.
