The Gate

BY MARIE HOWE

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

​“The Gate” from What the Living Do by Marie Howe. © 1997 by Marie Howe. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.​

I am proud to have had Howe as a workshop teacher twice while in grad school. As much as she did teach me in those rooms about reading, and risk and voice, her work has taught me more. ​

Here recent interview on NPR with Krista Tippet has a lot of the insight and voice I remember so clearly.​

More Poems of the Day

Memory of Elena by ​Carolyn Forché

There She Is by Linda Gregg

​Dream Song 29 by John Berryman

​Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara

​All Hallows by Louise Glück