These poems show how a mother’s fear for her daughter is often the flip side of her fear for and of her son, of what he as a representative of his gender might do. How do we negotiate this very difficult terrain?

I had fun subverting the idea of an "Anniversary Declaration," which one might assume will be momentous and romantic, by addressing the dailiness and occasional strife that can accompany a long marriage, no matter how happy it is. 

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.'

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

"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

My father, a math and astronomy professor at a small university in the rural Midwest, taught me to look up and learn about the night sky.

I wrote “Tree of Life” after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018, to honor and grieve for my friend, Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, and the other beautiful souls who lost their lives that day.