"My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
out another, to matter another, until I have got
something I might have said . . .
but did not."
-Anne Sexton, from "Said the Poet to the Analyst," To Bedlam and Part Way Back
Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. Her poetry collection A Wife is a Hope Chest was published by Brain Mill Press in 2017. She writes a column on comedy, teaches writing at Ivy Tech Community College, and is also a hospice volunteer.
Christine reads "Biting the Rind," "The Worst Thing in the World That Could Have Happened," "The Beauty of Love," and "A Wife is a Hope Chest."