“I think it shows in the poems that the author didn’t ask ­permission of the parents to publish them.” 

Climbing the stairs, slowly, on my palms
and soles, bent far forward, I see
my shins closer than usual—
their indigo and red-violet fireworks,
their royal-blue wormholes—
how much difference is there, anymore,
between me and a cadaver?

They seem to be gliding toward me, in dresses,
they float and turn, in summer floral, the
ladies of the fruit trees, in ruffles, in dishevel,

Standing in the ladies’ room line,
in the temple basement, the woman in front of me
said, “I’ve been sitting behind you, admiring

The hospital lobby was lined with short 
and long views of Audubon’s birds,
the tallest ones’ necks curved, all the way

More and more, along the shore
of the Northeast Corridor, 
birds are standing in alcoves like telephone booths

A year after he left I thought of the day he’d been 
sick and I’d cut my then-husband’s hair 
to cheer him up. First I combed it, 

They put a roof over our heads.
Each tile was a slab of clay laid over a
thigh and bent until it dried bent,

After Marcus Licinius Crassus
defeated the army of Spartacus,
he crucified 6,000 men.

We were driving north, through the snow, you said
you’d turned 21 during Vietnam, you were
1-A. The road curved

Finally someone just drops it and breaks it
like a mercy killing, the cow butter dish,
it cracks easily into five pieces,

Three years after my father’s death
he goes back to work. Unemployed
for 25 years, he’s very glad to be

When I go to the bathroom I see a beetle in the tub,
black, with a band of stone color
around the center, granite with a trace of

You could never really say what it is like,
this hour of drinking wine together
on a hot summer night, in the living room

Backwards and upside down in the twilight, that
woman on all fours, her head
dangling and suffused, her lean

When my girl and her friend walk away from me
at the swimming pool, I see her friend’s
sweet stick legs, thin as

Finally they got the Singles problem under control, they made it scientific. They opened huge Sex Centers—you could simply go and state what you want and they would find you someone who wanted that too. You would stand under a sign saying I Like To Be Touched and Held and when someone came and stood under the sign saying I Like To Touch and Hold they would send the two of you off together.

As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother’s house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate

Sharon Olds’s poem “The Solution” appeared in our Summer 1985 issue. Her most recent collection is Stag’s Leap.Finally they got the Singles problem under control, they made it scientific. They opened huge Sex Centers—you could simply go and state…