Ellen Bass

Loving A Woman

I was nineteen and on LSD / the only time God spoke to me. / Or, if not God, a voice so clear / and clearly not my own

Selected Poems

— from “Carpe Diem in the Backyard” | Here we are, I say to my dog, / who inclines his boxy head / then lowers himself to the unmown grass, / pointed tawny leaves scattered in heaps.

Ode To The God Of Atheists

Respite

My Mother’s Painting

The Human Line

Winter Solstice

The longest night of the year and I’m awake / in an overheated apartment on the Upper West Side. / I roll over and over like a rotisseried hen / while Janet’s breath softly rises and falls / and our son sleeps soundly on the floor, / his broken leg silently knitting bone to bone.

In Praise Of Four-Letter Words

We yell shit / when the egg carton slips / and the ivory globes / splatter on blue tile. / And when someone leaves you / bruised as a dropped pear, you spit / that fucker, fucking bastard, motherfucker.

Pray For Peace

Worry