I am sharing with you an elegy for my dog Scruffers, who was a small black and tan Jack Russell mix my family rescued from a shelter. Scruffers was a handsome fellow with a jaunty stride. He and I ...

I must visit; it’s urgent, can’t they see? How can I grieve after losing your pictures? The bereaved must cling to memories, They say. But what if they aren’t tangible? I know I do remember all your ...

If you sleep among convicts, you can’t wake among angels. Chasing your God is fine until you start chasing out others. Then ...

Chidiock Tichborne (1562–1586) died at age 24 — his bowels cut out while he was alive, before being hanged, drawn, and quartered by Queen Elizabeth’s executioners for his part in the Babington Plot to ...

A version of this story ran in the March / April 2024 issue. To submit a poem, please send an email, with the poem as an attachment, to [email protected]. We are looking for previously unpublished ...

A light touch and a wry tone are what readers typically remember from the poetry of Alexander Pope (1688–1744), but he was absurdly talented, a man from whom words poured out in meter and rhyme as ...

I had loosely planned an upbeat column to start off the new year, but I’m writing it on Jan. 1, my mother’s birthday in 1919. Which got me remembering the day of her death, 84 years later. Then, in ...

The musician and drag queen is an exvangelical who came to see that holding on to a theology of self-loathing was just too dangerous. The US government is deploying Norman Rockwell’s paintings of ...

This poem explores all the distances between mothers and their children, the frayed seams between countries and cultures. It is also a poem of love and understanding, as if love is a way to the ...