Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny by: Lisel Mueller Jenny, your mind commands kingdoms of black and white: you shoulder the crow on your left, the snowbird on your right; for you the cinders part and let the lentils through, and noise falls into place as screech or sweet roo-coo, while in my own, real, […]

If you can keep your head when all about you     Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,     But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,     Or being lied about, don’t deal in […]

    Invictus  William Ernest Henley Out of the night that covers me,       Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be       For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance       I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance       My head is bloody, but unbowed. […]

Still I Rise -Maya Angelou You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just […]

I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying– He had always taken funerals in his stride– And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed […]