by Denise Duhamel

INCRIMINATING LETTERS

One by one, my secrets die with the people who knew them. But how can I be sure my dearests kept my confidence? Their lovers or kids might be in on what I hoped would stay hidden. (Sometimes don’t tell anyone translates to I’ll just tell one person.) And who will inherit the incriminating letters I sent, but never thought to get back? First, it was Santa I feared was watching. Then God. And now the surveillance state. So I may as well write my confessional poems, turn myself inside out, play with the alphabet.

PROJECTOR: AN ARS POETICA

Uncle Ray was an amateur photographer. One spring, every morning, he snapped the robins’ nest outside his living room window. Blue eggs, then eggs with little cracks and beak tips breaking through. A few photos later, shell bits pushed to the ground and little slick chicks. In his basement, he tinkered on an electric car engine he patented but said no one would buy. He rode his bike twenty miles a day and dove for lobster in Narraganset. His lobster trap was a big box that looked like his camera. He fed us his catch with melted butter then set up his screen for the slideshow which ended with a mother robin feeding one of her babies a worm.

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Denise Duhamel’s most recent books of poetry are Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (2021) and Scald (2017). Blowout (2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a distinguished university professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.