Debra Bruce
Debra Bruce’s most recent book is Survivors’ Picnic, and her poems appear widely in journals including the Cincinnati Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin, Poetry, and Women's Studies Quarterly. She is professor emeritus at Northeastern Illinois University and lives in Chicago.
Reading List
Annunciation Elegy
You never knew I let you off the hook. Don’t fall in love, you warned—just a joke. Our final essays about to be turned in, a footbridge crossing the river to your dorm, my hair still damp, your flannel on my skin— no quips, no jokes—we both had eight o’ clocks. If asked what you […]
What Do You Say, Daniel?
Did he do it? Everybody knows he did. His face pops up on his mother’s phone again— her jolt of love, spritz of anxiety. She’s being summoned, parents are gathering for the ceremony of a child’s apology, her boy too-stiffly six for cuddling, who grips his shard of stone but won’t confess. Somebody scratched the […]