Brian Doyle
Seating chart
In the fifth row first seat there was a slight boy named Matthew. He could not sit still under any circumstances whatsoever.
If I become like you, I will write about a roughed grouse
If I become like you I will write about a roughed grouse,
Says the boy, five years old, with a face like a chipmunk
Storing up winter browse. We are at his school, where he...
A perplex raising
The man on death row in the federal penitentiary writes to me
On lined loose-leaf paper that when he was a boy in the South...
The actual you
What are the things I should know about being homeless
That I would never imagine myself? I ask a girl who was
Homeless from age thirteen to age seventeen. You never...
The whole weasel question
Consider the case of a mathematician, in this case
My oldest brother, who is (a) halved by an illness,
(b) stilled completely by it, and (c) reduced to ash....
Poem for my brother to read silently in his bedroom window before the gregarious hospice nurse arrives
The good sweet Lord knows I have nothing wise to say about anything
Whatsoever; certainly that has been proven over the last fifty-five years...
When Women Were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams is a writer of stunning power. She is also a writer who spends pages mistaking journal entries for literature.
Psalm 46:5, in which they come for the body
They are coming for the body; a nurse certifies
That who she was is no longer resident in what
She was, selah. They turn out to be one woman.
...
Patrick born too early
In my first family, the children were referred to not only
By their given names and often their religious names also,
But often by an identifying characterization as well: John...
A shimmer of something
Well, the aged mother of the woman who married me died,
And there are so many stories both sad and hilarious to tell,...
A small poem
To say thanks for reading this poem,
And all the other ones I've inflicted
Upon you over all these years. I did
Think, many times, of your gracious...
Maybe the future is a story that hates to wait
Me, personally, I think stories are starving to be told.
I think there are millions there, jostling and elbowing
To get to the parachute bay and snatching any chance...
At Our Lady of Unanswerable Questions School
Another headlong visit to another burbling seething sea of shaggy miracles.
I wear my good black shirt so as to indicate respect and some small dignity....
The Flying Eagle Patrol
In the high summer of my thirteenth year on this lovely planet
I was mailed to Boy Scout summer camp in a sprawling forest...
On Gregory Avenue
Down in the basement folding the laundry, towels first to trim the pile,
I realize that I have lived in this house now precisely as long as I lived...
Dechi Palmo
Discovered a few moments ago that my sister, my sole sister,
The sister I have admired for more than fifty years, the sister...
A review of Every Riven Thing, Swan and Walking Papers
Two questions for today: First, why read poetry? I mean, really—who cares? Who has the time, not to mention coin, when you could be reading tremendous novels and stunning essays?...
A review of Contact!
Wouldn't it be great if one of the world's best travel writers, after
60 years and fortysome books, went back through her work and notes and
plucked out hundreds of haunting, revelatory, shimmering moments— brief
encounters that "have been sparks of my work," she might say, "if often
only in glimpses—a sighting through a window, a gentle snatch of sound,
the touch of a hand . . . fleeting contacts [that] have fuelled my
travels down the years, generated my motors, excited my laughter and
summoned my sympathies."