Remember…we don’t see objects, we see light. […] Light can do anything water can do–flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do–paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always...

Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after

She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.

Do you ever want to go home?’ I asked Paul.He brushed an ash from my face. ‘It’s the century of the displaced person,’ he said. ‘You can never go home.

Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.

Men… No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.

I wanted to freeze this moment forever, the chimes, the slight splash of the water, the chink of the dogs’ leashes, laughter from the pool, the skritch of my mother’s dip-pen, the smell of the...

I decided that if I was never going to sell anything as long as I lived, I might as well do what I want to do ’cause then at least I would’ve done what I...

For what is writing besides capturing thoughts that belong to all of us, so that we can recognize ourselves, undestand ourselves, and perhaps, each other. Every thoughtful book about love makes us better lovers, I...

Rena noticed me watching it pass. ‘You think they don’t got problem?’ Rena said. ‘Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.’ She smiled, baring the part between her two...

You were my home, Mother. I had no home but you

Don’t turn over the rocks if you don’t want to see the pale creatures who live under them.

I almost said, you’re not broken, you’re just going through something. But I couldn’t. She knew. There was something terribly wrong with her, all the way inside. She was like a big diamond with a...

His voice was cloves and nightingales, it took us to spice markets in the Celebs, we drifted with him on a houseboat beyond the Coral Sea. We were like cobras following a reed flute.

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.

Love humiliates you, hatred cradles you.

I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your...

The expression in her eyes was bitter as nightshade. ‘You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the...

But then I realized, they weren’t calling out for their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn’t mean the women who let them down, who failed to...

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn’t a guest, you didn’t play its favourite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.

I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a...

Always learn poems by heart,’ she said. ‘They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.

You must find a boy your own age. Someone mild and beautiful to be your lover. Someone who will tremble for your touch, offer you a marguerite by its long stem with his eyes lowered....

I couldn’t stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was.That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should havespent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He’dhave had...

Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret...