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Charles Atkinson

Charles Atkinson taught poetry and nonfiction writing for 30 years at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His first poetry collection, The Only Cure I Know, received the American Book Series award for poetry.

Author

Back Steps

If she asks you, face averted, to sweep up a fieldmouse carcass by the back steps, you can just take the kitchen broom and dustpan and roll the thing in with a stroke, chatting as you pry off the garbage can lid; but then the chance may not c [...]

More Blessed to Receive

I've bent over them in the dark, straddling model train tracks— bright slivers of moonlight—and Bear, abandoned on his back, glassy-eyed. They don't know I come in to mend the broken track and return Bear to the pillow and to ask their for [...]