In the first week of the pandemic, when we didn't know this would last for more than a year, when we created a bunker life in a one-bedroom apartment, these two poems poured out of me. In "It Was Our First Great Sorrow," I imagined what hell would be like if it were made of flowers, when something beautiful turns into the tragic. Then in a burst of uncharacteristic positivity, I thought about how phrases like "the best things in life" are so familiar yet unknown and undefinable. Those moments that make you feel on a visceral level that life is precious are the ones that surprise, the ones that defy rational explanations. Now, more than a year after that bunker life, Shenandoah Journal has put these poems out in the world, and the world has changed so much, yet in some ways, not at all.
Read the rest of "It Was Our First Great Sorrow" and "The Best Things in Life."
And check out the full issue of writers I'm lucky to be sharing space with, including Anna Maria Hong and a new translation of Adonis!
