“Matilde, Where Are You? Down Here I Noticed, Under My Necktie And Just Above My Heart, A Certain Pang

Run You Might Get Away Faith Ringgold

june by Kenneth Steven

i go back to may 1937 by Sharon Olds

Le goût de la musique : le pianiste, Mark Rothko, 1932-33...

Mercy

by Joy Sullivan

Once, we were grilling zucchini from the garden. It was summertime and I was about to leave you. A praying mantis landed on the grill. He was bright and beautiful even as he fizzled and I burned all my fingertips trying to save him. You can't tell when an insect is in pain but he must have been and you put him in the grass so softly where I found and stomped him. And I think it surprised us what we each defined as mercy.

“When I was nine years old, the world, too, was nine years old. At least, there was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance. We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as alike as two pennies. And there was never a harsh word between us, for the simple reason that there were no words at all between us; we never uttered a word to each other, the world and I. Our relationship was beyond language—and thus also beyond time. We were one big space (which was, of course, a very small space).”

— Inger Christensen, The Condition of Secrecy

Swimming, One Day in August

by Mary Oliver

It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon to the sea which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything. Except that it will be time, again, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.

we lived happily during the war by ilya kaminsky

Derica's LA Loft Debra Cartwright