“What Does Your Seeing Want?" by Joan Houlihan

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 25, 2017   What Does Your Seeing Want?   Joan Houlihan

Your scrunched eye seizes, sizes me up: pulley-roped palliatives, craft and lies. Washing my hands in the back, I wonder: what's a good death? Of course you held on and I held on to you. We had married ourselves to a trance.            Copyright © 2017 Joan Houlihan. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "This poem is part of an elegiac book-length sequence called Shadow-feast. The poem enacts the thoughts of a caregiver in the presence of a terminal illness." —Joan Houlihan   Joan Houlihan is the author of Shadow-feast, forthcoming in 2018 from Four Way Books. She teaches in Lesley University's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Poetry by Houlihan   The Us (Tupelo Press, 2009) "On the News of Your Illness" by Gary Soto "In Search of an Umbrella in NYC" by Juan Felipe Herrera "Prodigal" by Linda Gregerson Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038