precise language
— A girl visits her ancestors' graves in St. Petersburg, encountering a man who offers water to wash the stones, and wonders about the Russia she might have known.
— A prose poem imagines the inner life of a crab—its loneliness, fear, and anger—questioning whether people remember the being they've hurt after mounting it on a wall.
— Hope personified as an ambiguous companion who guides the speaker across treacherous terrain while knowing them intimately.
— A nine-year-old city girl boards a fishing boat and watches Hyannis dissolve in the distance like a homeland she's never visited.
— A young poet transforms a seashell into a golden rose, a spiral staircase, and a tower, finding ancient scrolls of saltwater within its chambers.
— A portrait of a beloved teacher with hairy beard, runny nose, bitter jokes, and hard math who wins students over with cupcakes and stories.
— A fierce warning about tigers mixes danger with unexpected tenderness, calling them siblings to baby pebbles and the award of everything.
— Cool summer nights become a canvas where stars rewrite the world, breezes snake through ivy, and memory crystallizes into art.
— Bluebells trigger memories of a childhood garden in Roslyn, where the speaker once folded fertilizer beads into soil, calling them 'green pearls' that held perfect potential.
— A thirteen-year-old explores memory and perception through four vignettes: coffee grounds and bird eggs, violin practice, shower wall patterns, and a childhood dream of walking on eggs.