The forest lain out beneath the iron sky of winter Is stiffened in frost Frozen in fog The mists as chill as death wandering to the impulse of our south-west winds The river itself is a torrent Tearing asunder the wood of skeletons and Sending a raving sound of thunder through the air Our forest now, The cradle of fog-bred pestilence Breathing contagion into its crowded recesses How I long for blue skies, placid sunshine and soft western gale filled days Our forest to shake l

The punch came in an unlikely setting: a writing workshop at a girls’ high school in South Los Angeles where I was a creative writing instructor. It was a small county-run school, a sort of last resort for girls who hadn’t succeeded at regular schools, and they were a tough bunch. Still, I hadn’t expected classroom violence. So, when Gabriela (student names have been changed), who was one of the class’s most enthusiastic writers, slammed a fist into the cheek of the girl next

On a sunny August afternoon in Kathmandu, I heard the whine of sirens. Looking up from my laptop screen, I saw ambulances careering up the punctured streets as the wounded city continues to show the ravages of its lost dreams muffled by the canopy of the uncertainties. Broken limbs of hope were all over the streets. The scale of financial strain, gigantic. Despair, in some ways, had just begun. I slowly lowered by head and closed my eyes. The air above me was thick with the s

for Tess Barbara no longer went to the women’s group at the Methodist church, and for the first year after her daughter’s death, Barbara didn't even come to church. When she came, she slipped in when the choir was beginning, went up and into the balcony, and crept out before the final prayer. She let herself go. The gray came from the roots of her hair and took over like weeds in a flower bed. When I saw her at the grocery store, the dark circles underneath her eyes and the s

. And then, the sadness came & so I braced the falling shelves, broke free the cobwebs from the doorframe. Traced my eyes from heaven to floor. Until today, I felt nothing different than before, heard maybe a little less highway & electric buzz at a great distance beyond my yard. I think of summer cicadas, my childhood locusts, their paper shells earthgrown & burstforth— my first glimpse of plague, misunderstood— & a humming. How I find myself—these days—I sweep the patio fre