The poem was written in response to the convergence of multiple artistic endeavors, each of which spoke strongly to me about history—one was the 'Migration Series' exhibit at MoMA for which the poem was commissioned, and one was the book 'The Warmth of Other Suns.'

The question I found myself asking every day of my life in Israel is how can we see each other’s humanity, our mutuality, the beautiful synergies possible between our cultures? The question became a poem, a poem that is still a question and maybe a call.

Today’s poem reveals its form in its title; an epithalamium is “a song or poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom,” and it derives from the Latin & Greek words epi- (at or near) and thalamos (room or bridal chamber).

The poem makes us laugh when we read it, but like all the best laughter, it comes with a gut punch. The idea of having an inner bitch who gets to unreservedly express our feelings towards an ex—well, that is funny. But also painful.

The poem evocatively opens with a question: “What if, late in my life, / an old love returned?”

In today’s poem, “Poem,” by Joan Naviyuk Kane, the speaker’s search for a word in Inupiaq, the language of her mother, uncovers compounded losses—natural, cultural, ancestral, and personal—that have accrued over time and echo through generations.

"I read somewhere that as falcons starve, their vision sharpens. I knew I wanted to write about that hunger and the resulting enhanced power—like a superhero’s power." — Dion O'Reilly