Carry On

Click on the orange link below to read a review of A Widow's Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/carry-on/

I'm the Son of Your Father

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Mentor: A Memoir by Tom Grimes.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/son-of-your-father/

Grief

Grief
By Joseph

Grief...
I don't understand...

I don't understand
How we can love
someone
How we can know
someone
And then they
can suddenly be
gone...

Is it a cosmic joke
Is it a lesson to be
learned...
Is it meant to humble
us, to hurt us
To make us feel
like fools?

But then we remember...
Who they were
What they taught us
What they said...

How they loved us
How they needed us
How they live inside
us...

How they are as
real as anything
that has ever been...

How they were as
much as we will
ever be...

We live, incomplete,
but yet fuller
because of them.


Photo: flickr (Andrea in grief, NCBrian)

False Witness

False Witness
by Ken Volonte

I could stop to ask, "Whose fault
That a friend of mine was killed last Saturday?"
Although to him it was still Friday,
So late or early was the hour.

My imagining could vault;
And I could say, "Oh, no! It isn't he."
But at that time and on that stretch of road,
It would be Jeff.
Oh, Jeff!

I could blame God,
Or the highway patrol.
I could say I had no right to live,
To live when Jeff had died,
To see him in every face on the street -
I could tell you stories,
But I won't.