About Joan Houlihan Nothing Sweet

Joan Houlihan To Celebrate the Empty Tomb We convene here, listen to Uncle B. in his backward-pointing baseball cap lit with stories, muttering of loss- a low and meaningless animal sound we take for talk. This Easter we've put it all behind us and spoon-fed with the whipped milk of childhood, we revel in what is not: the rock of the undiscussed. Mother's cataract and Father's altered look give us nothing to say is wrong. We lean into this-- where the rock was struck and the air inside stopped; where unhinged stems will root and flower-- because that which was unknown, is not, and that which cannot, must rise and walk. Joan Houlihan 's publications include The Gettysburg Review, Fine Madness, Black Warrior Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Marlboro Review, and Poetry International, among others. She is editor in chief of Perihelion and senior poetry editor of Del Sol Review, both published at www.webdelsol.com. Her chapbook, Our New and Smaller Lives, published by Black Warrior Review, can be viewed on Warrior Web. She also writes a column called The Boston Comment which deals with issues related to contemporary American poetry.