al-Baghdadi picks his teeth with an archaic toothbrush. 
Salvadora persica from Babylon, 
a twig twisted green from the mustard tree.

Husbands are burning their wives;
The river, resigned, takes everyone in.

The cornfields didn’t covet buttons yet;
No ghost crouched in the cedar chest,

forever looking down for what I've lost:
a strand of fate I snipped and dropped and dread

but I’m afraid they’d wet the page, and you might think
     them tears.

I guess like losing anything, I thought
it was coming back at first. And then days
crowded round with nowhere else to go—

With an ornate rug draped behind her, Eliza Griswold reads an extremely prescient poem by Mark Strand.

Reading these long and sluggish lines, I can see Wallace Stevens at work in his quiet office, looking out of the window at a cold, sunny winter day much like today. He sees smoke leaving the neighbor’s chimney. Someone has made a fire. But I find t…