A Tidings of Magpies

excerpt from Dracula by Bram Stoker Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back. And with a grim sort of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protruberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. We were both silent for a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the first dim streak of the coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I list...

Giselle ... "...cause sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead." Poor Giselle, if only she'd had an IPod to listen to the wisdom of Adele or read some poetry. Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself by Barbara Crooker like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking, flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek across the sky made me think about my life, the places of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling, the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place. Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold for a brief while, then lose it all each November. Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields, land on the pond with its sedges and reeds. You do not have to be wise. Eve...

by David R. Slavitt Her repertoire is limited but fulfilling, with two preoccupations, or three, perhaps, if you include the taking of many naps: otherwise she is snuggling or killing.

by Rafael Campo I pass you in a hurry, on my way to where another woman who I know is dying of a stroke that in the end is nothing worse than what is killing you. Same gurney, same bruised arms and mute IV— you wait for what might be a final test. It's something in the way you look at me that makes me realize you have your own mistakes you think you're paying for, your own ungrateful kids, your own unspeakable pain. Yet you look at me, still desperate for just another human being to look kindly back at you, to recognize in you the end is not far off, is not so unimaginable. Years ago I watched a patient of mine say goodbye to life. She was alone like you, alone like me, she was in agony. She looked at me, and I, afraid to be the last thing here on Earth she saw, twisted my head to look away. I almost do the same to you, afraid you might imagine me as later you lay dying, but I don't. Instead, I look at you remorselessly, ...

A Lover by Amy Lowell If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly I could see to write you a letter.

Letter from a Mental Hospital by Kim Lozano From the heart of an old box of letters I lift a small water-stained envelope. Inside, a note card as thin and brittle as a frozen leaf bears a message written fifty years ago by a woman who shares my name. She delivers no greeting, no sorry to have been away so long. She leaves no record of visitors, rationed cigarettes, group art, or the barren iceberg of treatment. I imagine her listening to the ping of the radiator on a snowy morning, seated in her nightgown and socks by an open window. A bell rings in the hallway but she doesn't move toward her robe or her slippers or her brush. I see myself sitting beside her, reaching toward her dull pencil to place my fingers over hers, hand on hand, gliding over the words, moving like two skaters on a lake tracing the solitary line— Please come get me.

It was a grrrl's weekend at the lake. Pizza, beer, thrift store shopping, farmers' markets and girltalk. A nice break for all of us and a new way to reconfigure ourselves with 2 girls growing up, up, and away. CollegeGrrrl shadowed at BigFatTeaching Hospital, first in the Burns unit, then with me. That was fun to have her there and explain some of the details about nursing that can't be learned till you're in the thick of it and equipment that makes much more sense in person than in a lecture. HoneyHaired--our new collegegrrrl--made up for lost sleep. You'd think there was a magical sleeping potion in the backseat of the car. But, they're off and running again. Hubby is off working at winterizing the place before the season passes. I'm here on a day off with the remaining animal boys who could also sleep all day and night and then some. Must pull myself away quickly. I'm convinced they release some pherome that entices all humans around them to nap...

by Anne Porter Our poems Are like the wart-hogs In the zoo It's hard to say Why there should be such creatures But once our life gets into them As sometimes happens Our poems Turn into living things And there's no arguing With living things They are The way they are Our poems May be rough Or delicate Little Or great But always They have inside them A confluence of cries And secret languages And always They are improvident And free They keep A kind of Sabbath They play On sooty fire escapes And window ledges They wander in and out Of jails and gardens They sparkle In the deep mines They sing In breaking waves And rock like wooden cradles.