Author: Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University. Her poems have appeared in FREE INQUIRY (February/March 2008), as well as in The Providence Journal, English Studies Forum, and elsewhere. She is a lifelong atheist. Judaism was available in her family on a take-it-orleave- it basis, and she left it.
Light
My sweet-sixteen dress was yellow as the daffodils In the seamstress’s cramped but spotless living room, Yellow as the lemon bars she made each Christmas For the neighborhood children. Mrs. Mueller lived at the end of our block In a little stone cottage near a field of flowers, Like a grandmother in a fairy tale. …
Aunt Vera / For N.T.
Aunt Vera seemed frail while I was growing up. Every year, she had colds and laryngitis. She could not swim. She had allergies; She could not enter our cat-filled home. But, when I moved back to New Hampshire After my divorce, I saw that my parents were aging; Aunt Vera was not. With a scarf …