BOOK REVIEW David Rigsbee reviews Never-Ending Birds by David Baker
Alan Albert's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The American Poetry Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Mississippi Review, Poetry East, and elsewhere. He has been a finalist and semi-finalist in the Artists Grants Program in poetry of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has recently received an Artist Residency Grant at The Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.
Coats
We were trying to split things
as best we could, down to the salt and pepper
of chairs, lamps, books, our son's school
papers—furniture, dishes, sand and gravel.
Less and less daylight between the pores
of forgiving and the pores of pain.
If you want to know what this feels like,
look out over the top of a train, see
the miles ahead on a straight track.
Remember every day you've lived
poorly, if possible, before this one,
that last climb upstairs for the winter
coats, the lifting behind the sliding
doors that finally cracked your
heart—that last departure.
Alan Albert's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The American Poetry Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Mississippi Review, Poetry East, and elsewhere. He has been a finalist and semi-finalist in the Artists Grants Program in poetry of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has recently received an Artist Residency Grant at The Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont.