by Donna Hilbert Because I awaken at 6:19 to pain as if my heart were a wishbone pulled apart, I am not surprised when they climb the stairs to tell me you are dead. Now I understand what fear is: waiting for the messenger to tell me what I know. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert What binds me to this earth are the hands of my children, as I hold my mother holding her mother back to the mother who begat us all. This is gravity. This is why we call the earth Mother, why all rising is a miracle. Excerpted from Deep Red, Event Horizon, 1993

by Donna Hilbert A portion of ashes we buried, the portion remaining to be scattered sits on a shelf in my office, the container swathed in a flannel bag, like the bag protecting your tuxedo shoes. How handsome you were in formal clothes! Strangers often asked if you were someone. Should they ask for...

by Donna Hilbert I refuse to say pass away or even die words both passive, natural, insist instead on killed, word cruel enough to pluck you from this life. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert One night you come back fat. When I ask why, you say, the dead don’t exercise, but we do eat dinner. Excerpted from Transforming Matter, Pearl Editions, 2000

by Donna Hilbert Kathy gives me a card with angels on dolphin back swirling from sea to sky. I think of the morning last spring when from our window we spotted a pod of dolphin and you abandoned breakfast to join them for a swim. The card’s inscription: Together we will transcend the illusion that...

by Donna Hilbert for Lenore Brown In my heaven I wear white cashmere Armani, eat chocolate truffles without dribbling my breasts. The more Camels I smoke the better my breath smells and Cosmos and cabernet— all the fruit that I wish. Every day here is Great Hair Day and I always look ravishing, rested...