Date: 2006

"Curses, outbursts / and distracting chants simmer all day / long in the Crock-Pots of our heads."

— Gerstler, Amy (b. 1956)

Date: 2010

"The idea of sex with a woman, of 'having a lesbian lover,' was simply unthinkable, like living alone at the North Pole or deciding to become a lycanthrope. If the thought existed at all, it was a mote, a sweet nothing--a little 'feather on the breath of God,' barely sensed now and then, but most...

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)

Date: 2011

"And the wind will be dirty in his hair, and there will be no decent place left in his heart because in all this chasing nothing he will have scrubbed it out, scrubbed it hollow, and nothing can fill it back up but words he makes as beautiful as he can."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: 2011

"Clean out my heart, you know? It's like a crowded old garage. It needs emptying and sorting."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: April 21, 2014

"The old gag about LPs being like gasoline / Puddles that go up and dizzy us / With their fumes, and of middle age / Rotating us out of Earth's orbit, stars like / A corrupted computer file / And the forgetful mind, a red-topped / Tupperware when we were young / Now without gravity or capacity li...

— Greenbaum, Jessica

Date: July 16, 2014

"During the six years I begged my husband to get me pregnant, I kept certain images locked away in a mental hope chest."

— Rinaldi, Robin

Date: 2014

"If this were a domestic tragedy, and it might well be, this would be your fatal flaw--your memory, vessel of your feelings."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)

Date: 2014

"To your mind, feelings are what create a person, something unwilling, something wild vandalizing whatever the skull holds."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)

Date: 2014

"You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)

Date: December 11, 2014

"Marginalia is a blow struck against the idea that reading is a one-way process, that readers simply open their minds and the great, unmediated thoughts of the author pour in."

— Miller, Laura