Tishani Doshi's poem pays homage to a twelve-year-old girl who died of exhaustion last year during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Tag: Death
Malignant – A Love Story
BY CYNDY CENDAGORTA As her friend fell sick while she fell in love, she realized we don't get to choose our miracles or our malignancies.
Jericho Brown – Bullet Points
Jericho Brown's poem talks to the weight carried by black Americans who live under the constant threat of police violence and injustice.
Adrienne Rich – The Corpse-Plant
The corpse-plant's soft and scaly appearance and its drooping head give it a ghostly, deathly air in Adrienne Rich's poem.
The Buddha’s Last Teaching: Be Your Own Island, Your Own Refuge
The Buddha's final words of advice to his students before he died were to take refuge in the dharma and in themselves.
Brandon McQuade – Two Whiskies
Brandon McQuade's poem, 'Two Whiskies', is a melancholy narrative of the author's dream of a late friend.
Robert Bly – When William Stafford Died
After the death of the poet William Stafford in 1993, his friend Robert Bly wrote this tribute against the image of water flowing down the rocks of Montana gullies.
William Stafford’s Last Poem
Written in the morning of the day he died, William Stafford's last poem rattles with augury gilded by a sense of acceptance.
Ellen Bass – If You Knew
What if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone? Ellen Bass draws us in to the brief moments of contact that fill our day and urges us to consider the fleeting nature of every life we meet.
Billy Collins – The Dead
Billy Collins runs with the folkloric notion that the dead are watching us and pushes the image all the way to a reverie of the departed 'rowing themselves slowly through eternity' in glass-bottomed boats.