Like a Beggar

by Ellen Bass

Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist, 2015 Featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac “Ellen Bass’s new poetry collection, Like a Beggar , pulses with sex, humor and compassion.”— The New York Times “Bass tries to convey everyday wonder on contemporary experiences of sex, work, aging, and war. Those who turn to poetry to become confidants for another's stories and secrets will not be disappointed.”— Publishers Weekly “In her fifth book of poetry, Bass addresses everything from Saturn’s rings and Newton’s law of gravitation to wasps and Pablo Neruda. Her words are nostalgic, vivid, and visceral. Bass arrives at the truth of human carnality rooted in the extraordinary need and promise of the individual. Bass shows us that we are as radiant as we are ephemeral, that in transience glistens resilient history and the remarkable fluidity of connection. By the collection’s end—following her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetition—it becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller.”— Booklist Ellen Bass brings a deft touch as she continues her ongoing interrogations of crucial moral issues of our times, while simultaneously delighting in endearing human absurdities. From the start of Like a Beggar, Bass asks her readers to relax, even though "bad things are going to happen," because the "bad" gets mined for all manner of goodness. From "Another Story": After dinner, we're drinking scotch at the kitchen table.
Janet and I just watched a NOVA special
and we're explaining to her mother
the age and size of the universe—
the hundred billion stars in the hundred billion galaxies.
Dotty lives at Dominican Oaks, making her way down the long hall.
How about the sun? she asks, a little farmshit in the endlessness.
I gather up a cantaloupe, a lime, a cherry,
and start revolving this salad around the chicken carcass.
This is the best scotch I ever tasted, Dotty says,
even though we gave her the Maker's Mark
while we're drinking Glendronach... Ellen Bass 's poetry includes  Like A Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014),  The Human Line  (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book by the  San Francisco Chronicle, and  Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award.  She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking  No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women  (Doubleday, 1973). Her work has frequently been published in  The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Sun  and many other journals. She is co-author of several non-fiction books, including The Courage to A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse  (HarperCollins, 1988, 2008) which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages. She is part of the core faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, Adult, Fiction, American

70 pages, Paperback

First published March 25, 2014

About the author

Ellen Bass is an American poet and author.

Reviews

[Ken]

Nice to meet you, Ellen. Good stuff here. I like your free verse world because it's the same air I breathe, generally.

As for the book, the vast majority of poems are one-stanza jobs, often tall as centers on basketball teams. Bass's is a very journal-esque kind of world, so we see mostly treatments of her life, her kids, dealing with death of parents, and sex. You know. All that ordinary stuff.

Bass also includes Pablo Neruda-like odes throughout. Here we have odes to repetition, the heart, invisibility, boredom, fish, the God of Atheists, Dr. Ladd's black shirt skirt, and the first peach. You'll find these odes in the dictionary under the word "eclectic," in other words.

For an example of Bass's style, I give you one of the most poetic flourishes on killing an animal you'll ever read (and oh, reader discretion advised...vegans, stay away):

What Did I Love

What did I love about killing the chickens? Let me start
with the drive to the farm as darkness
was sinking back into the earth.
The road damp and shining like the snail’s silver
ribbon and the orchard
with its bony branches. I loved the yellow rubber
aprons and the way Janet knotted my broken strap.
And the stainless-steel altars
we bleached, Brian sharpening
the knives, testing the edge on his thumbnail. All eighty-eight Cornish
hens huddled in their crates. Wrapping my palms around
their white wings, lowering them into the tapered urn.
Some seemed unwitting as the world narrowed;
some cackled and fluttered; some struggled.
I gathered each one, tucked her bright feet,
drew her head through the kill cone’s sharp collar,
her keratin beak and the rumpled red vascular comb
that once kept her cool as she pecked in her mansion of grass.
I didn’t look into those stone eyes. I didn’t ask forgiveness.
I slid the blade between the feathers
and made quick crescent cuts, severing
the arteries just under the jaw. Blood like liquor
pouring out of the bottle. When I see the nub of heart later,
it’s hard to believe such a small star could flare
like that. I lifted each body, bathing it in heated water
until the scaly membrane of the shanks
sloughed off under my thumb.
And after they were tossed in the large plucking drum
I loved the newly naked birds. Sundering
the heads and feet neatly at the joints, a poor
man’s riches for golden stock. Slitting a fissure
reaching into the chamber,
freeing the organs, the spill of intestines, blue-tinged gizzard,
the small purses of lungs, the royal hearts,
easing the floppy liver, carefully, from the green gall bladder,
its bitter bile. And the fascia unfurling
like a transparent fan. When I tug the esophagus
down through the neck, I love the suck and release
as it lets go. Then slicing off the anus with its gray pearl
of shit. Over and over, my hands explore
each cave, learning to see with my fingertips. Like a traveller
in a foreign country, entering church after church.
In every one the same figures of the Madonna, Christ on the Cross,
which I’d always thought was gore
until Marie said to her it was tender,
the most tender image, every saint and political prisoner,
every jailed poet and burning monk.
But though I have all the time in the world
to think thoughts like this, I don’t.
I’m empty as I rinse each carcass,
and this is what I love most.
It’s like when the refrigerator turns off and you hear
the silence. As the sun rose higher
we shed our sweatshirts and moved the coolers into the shade,
but, other than that, no time passed.
I didn’t get hungry. I didn’t want to stop.
I was breathing from some bright reserve.
We twisted each pullet into plastic, iced and loaded them in the cars.
I loved the truth. Even in just this one thing:
looking straight at the terrible,
one-sided accord we make with the living of this world.
At the end, we scoured the tables, hosed the dried blood,
the stain blossoming through the water.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first poem in this, Relax, is the best poem in this book and it's so good, it crawled out of the book and put a bunch of poetry collections I own in headlocks, which is a pretty unexpected thing to have happen from a poem that's got zen mice and strawberries in it. The rest of the collection was astounding too though, I put a Star next to 12 of the poems. I guess that means that Ioved 12 of the poems so much that I just had to mark the table of contents up as like an offering to the poetry gods or something. Ellen Bass has an astonishing way that she writes which is kind of this big jog around a central theme and the jog just keeps bringing the poem somewhere unexpected, through dreamlike forests and busy downtowns and into and out of family run liquor stores and more than once, contemplating the nature and brick and mortar of the entire universe itself through something as common as cutting a chickens head off or smashing a plate of spaghetti against a restaurant wall in Northern California or just wanting wild sex from your partner of 30 years. Bass also does that thing on her jog that was perfected by Larry David when he was writing Seinfeld episodes or later, Curb Your Enthusiasm: she presents a theme at the beginning of her poem, this little sliver of unexpected green gem built of modern life, and as the poem jogs on, the gem gets lost a little on purpose as other cards are turned, but then at the end, she turns a last card and there is the gem from the beginning and it is astounding and fulfilling and wow, you've laughed and felt there is unlimited wonder and opportunity in the form of contemporary poetry look at that all the other poetry books on the shelf are fleeing in fear because they don't want to be headlocked into submission. Surrender to this one.

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think i enjoyed the first half of this collection slightly more than the second half (some gems: "Relax," "Nakedness," "Moth Orchids," "Ode to Repetition").

"Ode to the God of Atheists" and "Boat, Vietnam" didn't really work for me. i know i'm getting into semantics here, but of the latter poem, the line, "There is no war here now. / And only the usual number / of people are dying," is a pretty negligent oversimplification of a country ravaged by american terror (i'm thinking of all the generations of children and wildlife who were and still are affected by agent orange). over 11 million gallons of herbicide were poured over vietnam by the US military! mini history lesson, from "Consequences of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese Community":

The consequences of Agent Orange exposure are numerous and pernicious including an increased risk for cancer, miscarriages, and other diseases. However, the effect of dioxin as a teratogen, a substance that alters the health of a fetus while in utero, is particularly harmful. Studies have shown that exposure to TCDD through air, food, or soil leads to higher percentages of birth defects, most notably spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, neural tube defects, heart disease, and stillbirths.2 Within Vietnam, towns that were exposed to higher concentrations of Agent Orange have greater birth defects compared to towns with less exposure.2 Particularly, a recent study, found that in 2020 children from southern Vietnam had a higher prevalence of congenital heart disease (CDH) compared to children from northern Vietnam.3 This pattern is consistent with deployment sites of Agent Orange during the war.

The difficult process and high temperatures required to break down TCDD, has resulted in little clearance of the toxin from the environment. In fact, current levels of dioxin in Vietnamese soils are approximately equal to TCDD contamination levels in Agent Orange during the Vietnam war.3 One cause of these high contamination levels is that TCDD sprayed in river beds and mountains migrates to agricultural lowlands of Vietnam, polluting produce.3 The community’s continual exposure to the toxic chemical via indirect sources, such as local food, perpetuates the effects of the teratogen.3 Despite these consequences, little research has been conducted to analyze the effects of TCDD on the Vietnamese community.

so when reading a poem like, "Boat, Vietnam," historical semantics are really important to me. you get to enjoy your american tourism today and turn it into a tiny, flippant poem, then pick up and leave. but vietnamese people can't do that. what is "the usual number of people" when discussing death? what about death after colonialism and war? it's careless inclusions like this that sour my reading experience of a collection.

3.6/5. ellen bass should probably stick to insects and sex.

[Hannah Showalter · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh my god oh my god!!!! this is the best poetry book i've read this year. how have i never read ellen bass beyond a few poems here and there!?!? i've been missing out!! these are exactly the kind of poems i love to read; brief but detailed and such an intimate look into the ordinary moments of a person's life. beautiful, beautiful. so sexy too honestly!! and so so gay!! i need to buy this immediately so i can annotate it. 

this also made me SO excited about my own writing and made me want to write a thousand poems. made me so hungry for more poetry in my life!! so inspiring to me! 

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these poems. The world, life, and a bit of introspection. Tasty morsels on a day I am feeling hungry.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

When You Return

Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes. The egg,
bald yolk and its transparent halo,
slide back into the thin, calcium shell.
Curses will pour back into mouths,
letters unwrite themselves, words
siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
will darken and become the feathers
of a black swan. Bullets will snap
back into their chambers, the powder
tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
will disappear from maps. Rust
revert to oxygen and time. The fire
return to the log, the log to the tree,
the white root curled up
in the unsplit seed. Birdsong will fly
into the lark’s lungs, answers
become questions again.
When you return, sweaters will unravel
and wool grow on the sheep.
Rock will go home to mountain, gold
to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
to the spider’s belly. Night moths
tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
will be returned to coal, coal
to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
to stars sucked back and back
into one timeless point, the way it was
before the world was born,
that fresh, that whole, nothing
broken, nothing torn apart.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

everything here
seems to need us
Rainer Maria Rilke

I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and the twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you've managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn't care.
But when Newton's apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple."

-- "The World Has Need of You"

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed Ellen Bass' latest poetry collection. I had the pleasure of attending a reading at the Walt Whitman center in Huntington, NY, while visiting Long Island in April. She was awesome, beginning with the first poem in the volume, RELAX. As always, her poems are wry, moving and extremely accessible.

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely espectacular. It is a glorious poem collection by a fine and beautiful poet with a keen sense of the connections between everything. I loved it deeply.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

My enjoyment of this collection finished as it went along. I was quite struck by one of the first poems, Saturn’s Rings. With terrible lack of formatting, I liked the lines:

The gleam poured through my pupils into this small, temporary body, my wrinkled brain in its eggshell skull, my tunneling blood, breasts that remember the sting and flush of milk. Saturn, its frozen rings fire-white, reflecting the sun from a billion miles. Maybe there’s a word in another language for when distance dissolves into time.

[Desirae · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little.”

[Rachael Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best collections I've read this year.

[Sawyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5

I want to crawl inside of Ellen Bass' poetry and live there, right in the flesh of every word

[silas denver melvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

goddamn

[Emily Rittberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved ‘Relax’ (obviously) and ‘When You Return’. Will keep this on the bedside table to revisit 🙂

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful collection.

Favorites include:
Flies
Moonlight
Ode to the Fish
The World Has Need of You
Walking by Circle Market Late at Night
When You Return

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Poetry is such a good medium for coming to terms with expectations and disappointments. That is how we connect with other people. We need that. All of our suffering is not so different from each other’s. The first poem in Like a Beggar, begins: “Relax. Bad things are going to happen.” And it ends with eating a strawberry.”
Ellen Bass, interview with Kendall Poe from Tin House

Ellen Bass’ third collection of poetry is ripe with beginnings and endings, in a large, metaphorical sense as well as specific instances. She takes everyday thoughts and experiences and through her use of imagery and metaphor, makes them universal. Aging, sex, and our connection to nature are repeated themes. “Ordinary Sex” begins
If no swan descends
in a blinding glare of plumage,
drumming the air with deafening wings,
if the earth doesn’t tremble
and rivers don’t tumble uphill,

and then concludes with these tender lines:
And then a few kisses, easy, loose,
like the ones we’ve been
kissing for a hundred years.

Many of the poems in this collection are long, 1 ½ to 2 pages, without stanza breaks. This format increases the sense of contemplation about life, which is a main theme throughout the book. In a refreshing change from the majority of contemporary poetry collections, there are no sections. Scattered throughout are odes to things most of us would never have thought of as ode material. These are some of my favorite poems. Notice the interesting juxtaposition between the title and the content.
I like to take the same walk
down the wide expanse of Woodrow to the ocean,
and most days I turn left toward the lighthouse.
The sea is always different. Some days dreamy,
waves hardly waves, just a broad undulation
in no hurry to arrive. Other days the surf’s drunk,
crashing into the cliffs like a car wreck.
(Ode to Repetition)

“Ode to Boredom” describes a family vacation in “The rose-washed light of southern Italy.”
Nothing to do. Not a church or museum. Not even
A newspaper in English. We’d read all our books
and I’d embroidered the linen dishtowels.
We walked the empty vineyards and cherry orchards.
The fact that this is an ode celebrates the so-called boredom we yearn for when on vacation.

Bass has a playful, whimsical voice. A prime example of this is the poem “When You Return.”
Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes.

And the oh-my-God-I –wish-I- had-written-that- line, which opens the poem “Prayer.”
Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka.

[Alarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was fortunate to hear Ellen Bass read last week, then went home to start this collection. She often writes of the inevitability of bad things happening, but she also believes in the rejuvenating joy that can catch us unaware:

“…For a moment
it seems possible that every frailty, every pain,
could be an opening, a crack that lets the unexpected
reach us.”

Bass finds inspiration everywhere. Here are just some of the grand topics and small studies she captures in this book: telescopes, microscopes, murder, sex, ordinary days, killing chickens, the comfort of repetition, a sick child, a dying mother, wasps, the trials of aging, infidelity, a luxury hotel, and a cheetah.

Perhaps my favorite poem is “Restaurant,” in which she marvels at our human ability to go on doing what we need to do in the face of tragedy. It begins,

“Before she told me, she let me
finish my dinner.”

We understand the news, untold to us, is terrible, for she marvels that she’s still upright at the table, signing her credit card receipt:

“…very few people are dropping to all fours
and baying at the empty white plates.”

In “The World Has Need of You,” she wonders:

“What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?”

Perhaps that connectivity is where we find the strength to go on.

[TinHouseBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emma Komlos-Hrobsky (Assistant Editor, Tin House Magazine): Ellen Bass charmed the socks off me when she read “At The Padre Hotel In Bakersfield, California” at the Writers @ Work conference in Alta, Utah. I loved its slyness and honesty, its willingness to walk right up to the real stuff of this world. I immediately bought Bass’s collection Like a Beggar and read it in happy fits and starts on the plane ride home, then the subway going to and from work, meting it out carefully poem by poem so as not to slurp it down too greedily. Bass’s poems in this book all have that same charm of “At the Padre.” They take pleasure in engaging with the thingness of living—zippers, planets, peaches, telephones for transacting affairs, feet—without any preciousness, with smarts and grace. Totally recommended to cure you of things you didn’t even know were ailing you.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book solely for Bass's poem "The Morning After," which I read on its own and fell in love with - with the melding of ferocity and subdued suburban life. That poem is great, and appealed to me because it contained elements that I could relate to, despite the differences between Bass and myself. The rest of the book, however, is not so much my wheelhouse. Bass is an older woman - she's writing about aging and her changes in sexuality and harking back to her youth, and it's not the stage I'm at and therefore didn't hit me in the gut or evoke that poignant poetry reaction in me. There are moments of incandescence, of course - specific lines in specific poems that contained universal themes. But on a whole, I think I need to check out earlier Bass work.

[Michaelann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow wow wow wow.
Ellen Bass.
That's all I have to say.
Most gorgeous of all poets.

I love too many of the poems in this collection, but i would recommend it just for the emotional impact alone of finding the line that is the reference for the title "Like a Beggar."

A complete celebration of corporality and human love and what it feels like to be alive for just this short time.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good poet.

[Missy · Rating 2 out of 5]

i didn't think this was necessarily bad but only very few poems stood out to me or made me feel anything. just didn't do much for me

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word I would use to describe this book overall is lively. It feels like each poem is its own little adventure and each one has been worthwhile. As a result, I've read this book very quickly and wish it were longer than its 70 pages.

The poems run the gamut of emotions. The full pageant of life is in this one book, including various relationships with death. The poems weave back and forth between the present and the past but I never felt disoriented.

Though most of the poems flow uninterrupted down the page in medium-length lines, some are broken into stanzas of various lengths.

Over the course of the book we feel like we start to know characters in Bass's world through hints of them in poems here and there throughout. We see lives touched by joy and tragedy.

The best way for me to sell anyone on Ellen Bass's poetry is by example.

From "The Morning After":
I can’t see a trace of the little slice of heaven
we slipped into last night—a silk kimono
floating satin ponds and copper koi, stars falling
to the water. Didn’t we shoulder
our way through the cleft in the rock of the everyday
and tear up the grass in the pasture of pleasure?

From "At the Padre Hotel Bakersfield, California":
She’s a yacht in a sea of rowboats.
An Italian fountain by Bernini.
She’s the Statue of Liberty. The Hubble Telescope
that lets us gaze into the birth of galaxies.
Oh, may they set that hotel room ablaze—here
in this drab land of agribusiness and oil refineries
outdoing Pittsburgh as the top polluted city in the nation—trash it
like rock stars, rip up the 300 thread-count sheets,
free the feathers from the pillows.

Not all of her poetry is as sensual as those two poems, but they do exhibit the lively quality that I claimed for Bass's poetry at the beginning of this review. I highly recommend that anyone give this book a read.

[Brooke Eubanks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hardly believe there is a poet that could dethrone Ellen Bass as my favorite. This was a lovely hour to spend with her and her thoughts, her mournings and yearnings and musings of life and women.

Ode to Repetition: “When I get back in bed I find / the woman who’s been sleeping there / each night for thirty years. Only she’s not / the same, her body more naked / in its aging, its disorder. Though I still / come to her like a beggar.”

“Once I was afraid / of this, opening the curtains every morning, / only to close them again each night. / You could despair in the fixed town of your own life. / But when I wake up to pee, I’m grateful / the toilet’s in its usual place…”

Prayer: “Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka. / My lover watched me ascend / from the subway / like I was an underground spring / breaking through. / I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that. […] There are things I wanted, like everyone. / But to this angel of wishes I’ve worshipped / so long, I ask now to admit / the world as it is.”

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellen Bass writes so honestly about aging, sex, desire, motherhood, caring for her aging mother. Her images are so fresh - "a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic/ladle scooping the icy depths" ("Ode to the Fish"). Her line breaks turn meaning delightfully on its head - "If you've managed to do one good thing,/the ocean doesn't care" ("The World Has Need of You").
Sometimes I had questions about what happened in the stories of the poems (what did she tell her in "Restaurant"? What's going on in "Ode to Dr. Ladd's Black Slit Skirt"?). But I usually knew exactly where I was and who was speaking. I loved the sexiness of "Let's," the rewind images in "When You Return" and the contradiction of the "Ode to the God of Atheists."
The odes reminded me of Neruda's, with his attention to detail and his praise of everyday objects and foods. Ellen Bass' writing is the everyday plus surprises, which is the best kind of poetry.

[Sophie B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book in three sentences:
I came into this book expecting it to good and it was. This book explores sexuality, lack of faith, and our importance to the world. There was a lot of times where I just sat and thought: wow, who wrote this art?

What it does well:
The poetry is amazingly written and in that way it reminds me of Sweetdark, another personal favorite. It doesn’t confine what it talks about. It talks about everything.

Who should read this book:
If you’re atheist, gay, and mad at the world. This book is for you or like the person who recommended me said “this book is for the people who see how horrible the world is but just want to keep living.”

Waiting for rain “we’re just atoms combining and recombining: star dust, flesh, grass”

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ellen Bass is my favorite poet. At last, I've read through this entire book, in order. I prefer her comical poems, but Bass does not write any poems I do not adore. The poems in Like a Beggar are lively and full of images – and entirely unpretentious. The first of her poems I ever read, "Waiting for Rain" (conveniently featured in this book!) has been massively influential on the way I use language in my own poetry.

Finally, the character of this Bass's (seemingly autobiographical) speaker(s) definitely weighs in her favor: any writer who uses the word "heterosexuals" as a noun will win the greater part of my heart's acreage.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is said that good poets help us to see the world in new ways. This collection by Bass did present everyman events in new ways- sometimes introspective, sometimes humorous. One poem "Ode to the God of Atheists" spoke of a god that did not require you to ".....veil your face for it or bloody your knees. You don't have to sing." And yet, "....each pebble and fern, pond and fish is yours whether or not you believe." With humor, Bass talks about choosing your muse in life. Ideally you would pick the most beautiful, accomplished, etc muse. "But I've been assigned the Muse of work. She's a dead ringer for my mother......a cigarette burning in a cut-glass ashtray."

[Max Potthoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

"So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse / in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat, / slip on the bathroom tiles in a foreign hotel / and crack your hip. You'll be lonely. / Oh, taste how sweet and tart / the red juice is, how the tiny seeds / crunch between your teeth."

I fell in love with Ellen Bass after hearing Nicole Sealy read "Indigo" on a podcast. Such a treat to be at the front end of reading her work.