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Posts By: Aurora Shimshak

Brute Blood

The poem begins with a literal bang, reminiscent of an airstrike—“A sudden blow: . . . ” That first phrase of William Butler Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” is followed by a quatrain-long sentence describing how Zeus, in the form of a swan,…

The Lineman

I know people are amazed by all the wireless invisible stuff, and so am I, but I have to say I never got over being in awe of the real honest-to-God wires stretching across this country and around the world, those we can see and tend, those that can drop and jerk around like a snake, light up a mud puddle and fry the fragile life out of anybody.

Letter to an Apprentice

I am writing to you at the beginning of something. As one who has been through many beginnings, some more successful than others, I can confirm something you may be starting to suspect: there is nothing harder than beginning. The…

Reading Plato

I think about the mornings it saved me to look at the hearts penknifed on the windows of the bus, or at the initials scratched into the plastic partition, in front of which a cabbie went on about bread his…