Advice to Myself by Louise Erdich Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup. Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins. Don't even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don't keep all the pieces [...]

Heirloom Brian Sonia-Wallace Dad always grew tomatoes They were his pride and joy So when the lady outside Home Depot Offered me the box and said, ‘Do you have a garden?’ I didn’t say no, though I should have I said, ‘We have a theatre…’ And somehow that was just as good. It grows like a weed in Hollywood In the cracks between Film and Industry It was a grease monkey’s garage, then a shooting range But only now Can we call the people who run it clowns. We put the tomatoes out On the air conditioning supply unit To try [...]

With the Lark Paul Laurence Dunbar Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy, Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy; Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,— Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong. All the night through, though I moan in the dark, I wake in the morning to sing with the lark. Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves, Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves. But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky, I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry; And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved [...]

In This Place (An American Lyric) Amanda Gorman  An original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress. There’s a poem in this place— in the footfalls in the halls in the quiet beat of the seats. It is here, at the curtain of day, where America writes a lyric you must whisper to say. There’s a poem in this place— in the heavy grace, the lined face of this noble building, collections burned and reborn twice. There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square where protest chants tear through the air like sheets of [...]