Grace Schulman’s seventh collection of poems, Without a Claim, was published in September 2013 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Mariner Booka). She is Distinguished Professor, Baruch College, CUNY.
Poetry
July/Aug 2020
Meteor
That night the wind-chapped table shouted, new: fresh peach pie; bread, still warm, and consecrated by watery breezes on the shore of a town whose very name, Springs, was a […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2017
The Worst
The worst is not So long as we can say, “This is the worst.” — Edgar, in King Lear No, not the worst, not if it can be named. Say sorrow. […]
Poetry
July/Aug 2017
The Rooted Bed
When the medics lifted your lean body that once loped over hot sand to the sea,I wanted them to keep you on our bed like the one that waited for […]
Poetry
Winter 2013
Hickories
Why do I write of hickories, whose boughs touch other boughs across a slender road, when our neighbor, Haneen, born in Gaza, cried that a missile ripped her niece apart […]
Poetry
Summer 2011
Moon Shell
August, I walk this shore in search of wholeness among snapped razor clams and footless quogues. How easily my palm cradles a moon shell coughed up on shore. I stroke […]
Poetry
Spring 2010
Without a Claim
Raised like a houseplant on a windowsill looking out on other windowsills of a treeless block, I couldn’t take it in when told I owned this land with oaks and […]
Poetry
Winter 2005
B
In the beginning was the letter B. Through B, God made the world. Today that sign gleams on a keyboard neither for cadenzas nor waterfall arpeggios, but for prayers tapped […]
Poetry
Winter 2005
Fifth of July
Hot sun again. Coda to last night's flares that rose in giant O's and fell in tears, a lowd-own blue-note soprano sax blares "O beautiful," razz for the morning after. […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
Carnegie Hill Birdlore
Today a robin hopped between stalled cars, picked bright excelsior from a trucks cargo, flew it to a ledge, then dived for more. Odd bird: with Central Park’s gardens so […]
Poetry
Spring 2000
Black and White
Black: From bhel to shine, flash burn: shining white. White stones, frost, doves, icelight, icewind. Wanting words for more white and more black, Celan found the cliff where eyebright grew […]
Poetry
Autumn 1994
New Netherland, 1654
Pardon us for uttering a handful of words in any language, so cut loose are we from homes, and from His name that is still nameless, blessed be He. We […]
Poetry
Summer 1992
For That Day Only
New York, June 11, 1883 Daybreak, and she left her poppy-seed roll to follow them as they walked through the city carrying the dead child, her fourth brother born in […]
Poetry
Winter 1981
At the Stone of Losses
I search for what I have not lost. For you, of course. I would stop if I knew how. I would stand at the Stone of Losses and proclaim, shouting: […]
Spring 2015
Strangers and Friends
It is a commonplace that good poems can bridge cultures even when the cultures themselves continue to be at loggerheads.