DPF / Ryan

Mothers and daughters and a prayer.

from Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard / by Kay Ryan

The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.

DPF / Tufariello

Mothers and daughters.

from Twenty Weeks / by Catherine Tufariello

In every weather,
Wisdom and grace guard you together
And shelter you from harm and storm,
Who now lie heedless, dreamless, warm,
Curled in your dark honeycomb
Asleep, exactly halfway home.

DPF / Wilbur

Fathers and daughters.

from The Writer / by Richard Wilbur

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

DPF / Logan

Mothers and sons. And, ongoing mentor, friend, teaching us, one by one, to dive into the wreck and to grasp something worth bringing to light.

from The Farm / by William Logan

The kerosene lamp had gone out.
There was a ragged Bible in this dream,
open to Isaiah.

DPF / Bishop

Dreams, automated objective correlatives.

from The Man-Moth / by Elizabeth Bishop

Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.

DPF / Mark

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

from The Disasters / by Sabrina Orah Mark

“What are you doing in there, my little shipwreck?” “Commodifying my disasters,” said Beatrice. “That’s nice,” said Walter B. “Will you need some batteries?” “No,” said Beatrice. “Better save the batteries for the children.”

DPF / Shakespeare

Daughters and fathers.

from The Tragedy of King Lear / by William Shakespeare

Sir, do you know me?
You are a spirit, I know. Where did you die?

DPF / Eliot

Forbidden to see, but seen.

from The Waste Land / I. The Burial of the Dead / by T.S. Eliot

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see.

DPF / Plath

More like a GPS than not. Mothers and daughters.

from The Disquieting Muses / by Sylvia Plath

Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.

DPF / Berryman

from #29 / by John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
so heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.