Author: Sharon Olds

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds, We had been in the apartment two weeks […]

How do they do it, the ones who make love Without love? Beautiful as dancers, Gliding over each other like […]

Three months after he lies dead, that Long yellow narrow body, Not like Christ but like one of his saints, […]

The first ones were attached to my dress At the waist, one on either side, Right at the point where […]

On the then-below-zero day, it was on, Near the patients’ chair, the old heater Kept by the analyst’s couch, at […]

A week later, I said to a friend: I don’t Think I could ever write about it. Maybe in a […]

We played dolls in that house where Father staggered with the Thanksgiving knife, where Mother wept at noon into her […]

Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads, Like gnats around a streetlight in summer, The children we could have, […]

I pull the bed slowly open, I Open the lips of the bed, get The stack of fresh underpants Out […]

When I eat crab, slide the rosy Rubbery claw across my tongue I think of my mother. She’d drive down […]

In the taxi alone, home from the airport, I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept Creeping over […]

We decided to have the abortion, became Killers together. The period that came Changed nothing. They were dead, that young […]

I have heard about the civilized, The marriages run on talk, elegant and honest, rational. But you and I are […]

To say that she came into me, From another world, is not true. Nothing comes into the universe And nothing […]

When I got to his marker, I sat on it, Like sitting on the edge of someone’s bed And I […]

After we flew across the country we Got in bed, laid our bodies Delicately together, like maps laid Face to […]

Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt He had put on her face. And her training bra Scared me-the […]