What I Didn't Know Before By Ada Limón

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.

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

My (?) Body by S. Bruzon

Axiom

by Margaret Atwood

Axiom: you are a sea. Your eye- lids curve over chaos

My hands where they touch you, create small inhabited islands

Soon you will be all earth: a known land, a country.

one hundred love sonnets: XVII by Pablo Neruda tr. Mark Eisner

"Seizure" from Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho Willis Barnstone

oh thats hot as hell. if only sex was real

Sea Fever John Masefield

Ada Limón, from “The Russian River”, Sharks in the Rivers

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.