With No Experience In Such Matters by Stephen Dunn
With No Experience In Such Matters by Stephen Dunn To hold a damaged sparrow under water until you feel it die is to know a small something about the mind; how, for example, it blames the cat for the original crime, how it wants praise for its better side. And yet it’s as human as […]
Welcome by Stephen Dunn
Welcome by Stephen Dunn if you believe nothing is always what’s left after a while, as I did, If you believe you have this collection of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here behind the silence and the averted eyes) If you believe an afternoon can collapse into strange privacies- how in your backyard, for […]
Walking The Marshland by Stephen Dunn
Walking The Marshland by Stephen Dunn It was no place for the faithless, so I felt a little odd walking the marshland with my daughters, Canada geese all around and the blue herons just standing there; safe, and the abundance of swans. The girls liked saying the words, gosling, egret, whooping crane, and they liked […]
The Sudden Light And The Trees by Stephen Dunn
The Sudden Light And The Trees by Stephen Dunn My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog and wife beater. In bad dreams I killed him and once, in the consequential light of day, I called the Humane Society about Blue, his dog. They took her away and I readied myself, a baseball bat […]
The Routine Things Around The House by Stephen Dunn
The Routine Things Around The House by Stephen Dunn When Mother died I thought: now I’ll have a death poem. That was unforgivable. Yet I’ve since forgiven myself as sons are able to do who’ve been loved by their mothers. I stared into the coffin knowing how long she’d live, how many lifetimes there are […]
Story by Stephen Dunn
Story by Stephen Dunn A woman’s taking her late-afternoon walk on Chestnut where no sidewalk exists and houses with gravel driveways sit back among the pines. Only the house with the vicious dog is close to the road. An electric fence keeps him in check. When she comes to that house, the woman always crosses […]
Slant by Stephen Dunn
Slant by Stephen Dunn Yesterday, for a long while, the early morning sunlight in the trees was sufficient, replaced by a hello from a long-limbed woman pedaling her bike, whereupon the wind came up, dispersing the mosquitoes. Blessings, all. I’d come so far, it seemed, happily looking for so little. But then I saw a […]
Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn Relax. This won’t last long. Or if it does, or if the lines make you sleepy or bored, give in to sleep, turn on the T.V., deal the cards. This poem is built to withstand such things. Its feelings cannot be […]
Named by Stephen Dunn
Named by Stephen Dunn He’d spent his life trying to control the names people gave him; oh the unfair and the accurate equally hurt. Just recently he’d been a son-of-a-bitch and sweetheart in the same day, and once again knew what antonyms love and control are, and how comforting it must be to have a […]
Landscape At The End Of The Century by Stephen Dunn
Landscape At The End Of The Century by Stephen Dunn The sky in the trees, the trees mixed up with what’s left of heaven, nearby a patch of daffodils rooted down where dirt and stones comprise a kind of night, unmetaphysical, cool as a skeptic’s final sentence. What this scene needs is a nude absentmindedly […]
I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone by Stephen Dunn
I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone by Stephen Dunn The dogs greet me, I descend into their world of fur and tongues and then my wife and I embrace as if we’d just closed the door in a motel, our two girls slip in between us and we’re all saying each other’s names and […]
Essay On The Personal by Stephen Dunn
Essay On The Personal by Stephen Dunn Because finally the personal is all that matters, we spend years describing stones, chairs, abandoned farmhouses— until we’re ready. Always it’s a matter of precision, what it feels like to kiss someone or to walk out the door. How good it was to practice on stones which were […]
Biography In The First Person by Stephen Dunn
Biography In The First Person by Stephen Dunn This is not the way I am. Really, I am much taller in person, the hairline I conceal reaches back to my grandfather, and the shyness my wife will not believe in has always been why I was bold on first dates. My father a crack salesman. […]
At The Smithville Methodist Church by Stephen Dunn
At The Smithville Methodist Church by Stephen Dunn It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week, but when she came home with the “Jesus Saves” button, we knew what art was up, what ancient craft. She liked her little friends. She liked the songs they sang when they weren’t twisting and folding […]
Allegory Of The Cave by Stephen Dunn
Allegory Of The Cave by Stephen Dunn He climbed toward the blinding light and when his eyes adjusted he looked down and could see his fellow prisoners captivated by shadows; everything he had believed was false. And he was suddenly in the 20th century, in the sunlight and violence of history, encumbered by knowledge. Only […]