Sleep

Home Invasions

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Still, I hadn’t counted on real, live rats. “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard them before,” said Rat Guy #1, as he came to be known. “From the looks of it they’ve been here a while.”

The Coast of Nowhere II

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Sleet and black rain / pelting the eaves, the kind of predawn / that reaches through the window, hissing, / Your heart never was a bird let alone / a bright-red singing one.

The Trouble with Pillows

michaelmark3@gmail.com — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

She needs one medium / and a soft. He’s a soft.

Moon Jellies

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Some nights I dive into the sound / and let the waters have me. / I’ve felt the brush of a jelly arm— / they never really sting. It’s the glimpse / of that phantom-thing gliding beside me.

The Dead of Dream Town

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

As the majority population of Dream Town, the dead hold all elective offices. They determine the hours of the municipal pool. (Midnight swimming!) They program traffic lights to operate on peculiar patterns: Some never turn red. Others never turn green.

Selected Poems

sybil.smith7@gmail.com — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I know now, / having woken / and climbed away from you / in the chill / that I can do it. / Cast a spell / on my body.

Sandwoman

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:05:00 -0400

My insomnia began just when my baby girl started sleeping through the night. Anytime my head hit the pillow, my heart pounded like a million galloping horses, and I would tremble and sweat and eventually get up and stand on our back porch to beg the gods for peace.

Coach’s Kid

scotto.writing@gmail.com — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 04:00:00 -0400

Coach Walls started calling me “Tank.” Coach O’Brien said, “J.P. is out to kill.” Dad said nothing, but every time I looked at him — shin-high socks, gray shorts, V-neck tee with chest hair spilling out, whistle dangling around his neck — he was unable to hide his grin.

Perfectly Built Spaces

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:05:00 -0400

To help me fall asleep at night, I try to think about soothing subjects. This is why, since I turned fifty several years ago, I have found myself renovating houses in my head. . . . I am particularly interested in renovating the houses of my childhood.

Selected Poems

Tue, 31 May 2022 04:10:00 -0400

— from “Sleep Skills” | These days I wake up tired / after hours skimming sleep’s / surface like a hungry bird, waiting. / They say it’s a fact of growing older, / to lose the skill for sleep infants / and teenagers effortlessly have.

Sleep Study

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:10:00 -0400

I wake at 2:34 AM and lie in bed staring at the ceiling for a couple of hours, beating myself up for having awakened way before it’s time to get up.

Learning To Sleep

Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

You’re not really exhausted until the hallucinations start: Droplets of mercury floated in my peripheral vision. A lemon levitated out of the fruit bowl. A streetlight at the corner of State and Garfield laid its long body down on the sidewalk. The cat looked up at me from the corner of my desk, twitched his muzzle, and said, “Libby, Libby, Libby.”

Afternoons

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The rooms were filled with the smells of food. The only sounds were those of the house slowly settling around us, and the birds outside in the walnut trees, and an occasional car going by on the blacktop road.

His Mrs. K

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

She sits in the kitchen with coffee and a view of the soft rain. This is her early-morning time alone and always the best part of the day, before he awakens and she must adjust to his moods, his needs. This, her hour of resolve — not to do anything in particular, but only to bear on through the morning.

Four Beds

Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

I turn off the lamp and ease myself into the hand’s-breadth space between Rob and the wall. In the dark he places my fingers on the supple frets of his ribs, showing me simple chord changes. He murmurs throaty Gaelic into my ear, and I rub his stomach as if he were a sleepy child. We fold against each other like the pages of a letter.

November 2008

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:12:00 -0400

No matter who’s elected president, writers will write. Painters will paint. Three in the morning will still be three in the morning. The door in our psyche we don’t want to walk through will still be just down the hall. No matter who’s elected president, life will hand us the invisible thread that connects us all; love will hand us the needle.

Up All Night

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:06:00 -0400

Ovid’s Metamorphoses; sixteen yellow, legal-size pages; the Sea of Tranquility

Tell Me Something

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:02:00 -0400

Everything of my brother’s fits on a couple of shelves: boxes of records, books, a few photographs. When you’re killed at eighteen, you don’t leave much behind.

May 2008

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The universe will let me know when I’ve worn out my welcome. Until then, why don’t I make myself at home?

Into Silence

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Over the course of two years I photographed my grandmother Marjorie Clarke on my weekly visits to her home in rural Butler, Maryland. With her health declining and Alzheimer’s disease loosening her ties to everyday reality, I spent much of my time reading aloud or singing songs to her, attempting to hold her attention as long as possible.

Infant Pneumonia

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:04:00 -0500

She wouldn’t suck. She wouldn’t cuddle. / Her eyes rolled toward me, then away again. / I hugged her to my chest and ran / from the doctor’s office to the X-ray lab.

Waking Up

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Without cancer, from an overdose, to the truth of a marriage

May 2006

Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0400

What a big appetite fear has. What a succulent morsel I was last night.

Light, More Light

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:07:00 -0500

July 2005

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Today is four years since the accident that nearly took my daughter’s life; four years since the phone call that yanked me out of my Sunday routine, my idiotic notion that the day would go the way I wanted it to. It was a car crash. It could have been a bolt of lightning, Zeus showing off.

Sunbeams

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:00:00 -0500

It’s true that I’ve driven through a number of red lights. But on the other hand, I’ve stopped at a lot of green ones I’ve never gotten credit for.

Glenn Gould

October 2004

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0400

The instructions that came with this incarnation aren’t easy to decipher. One sentence can take years, even decades, to figure out — and even then I can’t be certain I’ve got it right.

March 2004

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

I’m tired this morning after having stayed up too late last night. Apparently I still haven’t learned how to tell time. If the little hand is on the 11 or 12, and the big hand is reaching for the remote or something to eat, does this mean I have all the time in the world?

November 2003

Sat, 01 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

The goddess of sleep wants more respect. Eight hours? I object. I tell her I used to get by on four. She tells me I was younger then. I tell her I don’t have time for this conversation.

October 2003

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400

I stopped writing, but nothing else stopped. The days kept getting longer, then shorter, then longer again. The bombs fell, then stopped, then fell again.