I haven’t updated the audio archive for a few months. It’s definitely a back-burner, bonus project, and spring is a difficult season to get anything like that done. But I’m happy to say that I’ve just added five new pieces, including one of my favorites by Andrea Hollander Budy. Click here (2.8 MB mp3) to listen to her read it in her own voice:

Andrea Hollander Budy

DELTA FLIGHT 1152

After the first drink, you can be
what you’re not. It’s so easy, all you must do

is answer this man’s questions with truths
you’ve just invented–on my way to the annual meeting

of master magicians, or to a conference of physicists
or international bankers–and your life is enviable,

new. Tell him you’re sad because you’re on your way
to your sister’s wedding and you’re in love

with her fiancé. Wipe your eyes,
sigh, mention almost under your breath the baby

you had to give up, the job. You’re the one
who introduced them, you couldn’t stop yourself, he would come

to your desk at the office. How lonely he was,
how young. But if you reveal the afternoon

of lunch on the rooftop, how for you
it wasn’t enough, there’s certain danger

this man, his drink finished, ice diluted
in the bottom of his plastic cup, will lean too far

into your invented life. He’ll offer his handkerchief.
You’ll finger his embroidered initials. He’ll touch your arm,

hand you his card. His voice unsteady,
he’ll tell you to call him at home–you,

lies, you could turn toward this stranger
and open.

an only child on her way
to see the ocean for the first time. You, who have managed

to live a moral life, whose troubled heart has never
surrendered, now with your wild and dangerous

–from Rattle #18, Winter 2002

I’ve also added a two great pieces by Diane Lockward, and more recent poems by Doug Ramspeck (from #27) and Anna Evans (#28). To listen and read along, just visit the Rattle Audio Archive.