Robert Cording teaches English and creative writing at Holy Cross College where he is professor of English and Barrett Chair of Creative Writing. He has published six collections of poems: Life-list, which won the Ohio State University Press/Journal award, in l987; What Binds Us To This World (Copper Beech Press, l991),Heavy Grace, (Alice James Books, l996) and Against Consolation(CavanKerry […]
Consider this: a moth flies into a man’s ear One ordinary evening of unnoticed pleasures. When the moth beats its wings, all the winds Of earth gather in his ear, roar like nothing He has ever heard. He shakes and shakes His head, has his wife dig deep into his ear With a Q-tip, […]
On the 65th floor where he wrote Advertising copy, joking about The erotic thrall of words that had No purpose other than to make Far too many buy far too much, He stood one afternoon face to face With a falcon that veered on the blade Of its wings and plummeted, then Swerved to a […]
I suppose what made it possible Was that no one expected more Than a day of unhurried hours, better Food, some free time to reread old letters, Write new ones. Small Christmas trees With candles lined both sides of the trenches And marked the two days’ truce. Who can explain it?—one minute troops […]
Boswell’s only note after an evening with Dr. Johnson. Nothing about the food, the wine, the subjects Of that night’s passions. Nothing even about The weather—rain most likely, the damp seeping Under doors. Just those two words for a night When everything else slipped into the vacancies Of the unrecorded. That’s all […]
Now that the sun’s hanging around longer, These first warm evenings bring The peepers up out of the muck, aroused By temperatures and a ferocious desire To peep and trill a hundred times a minute, Nearly six thousand times a night, Each wet, shining body a muscle of need That says faster, louder, faster, louder. […]