Susan Kinsolving, who has released three acclaimed volumes of poetry and brought her incomparable interpretations of the works of important poets in history to audiences worldwide, has consistently sought to excavate for the divine in the domestic. As you can see in the piece below, she is grace and grit come together on the page.

Coming Toward Me

She’s four years old with her hands on her hips
and elbows flared, to emphasize the interrogative.

"Hong Kong’s the city, King Kong’s the monkey,
right?" I nod, right. She smiles with self-

satisfaction, having sorted the Kongs correctly.
Soon she’ll be on to bigger stuff, the difficult

differentiations: appearance versus reality,
irony or coincidence, shades of truth, white lies.

Parent as predicate will end, my answers just
unwanted advice. The only hope is not to end

like an old movie with airplanes circling the city,
evolved animals being killed; shots, screams, sirens

sorting out crises of an apocalyptic world. And I,

useless for any affirmation, will be liable as a ghost.

– Susan Kinsolving