River Song

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>In this chapbook her third collection of poetry Deborah Hochberg traverses the landscape of loss.  </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>and in another</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>alternate reality</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>it is you who must go on</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>without me</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>without our nightly conversations</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>how we could talk</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>about anything</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>about everything</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Weaving back and forth in time from youthful innocence through illness and bereavement these poems seek to chart the wild and disorienting experience of grief.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>The other side</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>lies closer</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>than we think</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>One moment here together</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>a gentle communion</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>as if known</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>before</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>it was to be</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>our last</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>conversation</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Existing in a place between absence and presence these bittersweet and unsentimental poems honor a singular relationship and the persistence of human connection.</span></p><p></p><p></p>