Carol Dorf
Winter 2026 | Poetry
The Whatever Room
Whatever roams the air is traveling/ Over these griefs
Whatever ploughs our dreams is ours to give (Muriel Rukeyser)
I once stood in front of a room of Whatever
despite the wolves that roamed
the corridors, their fur shiny, the
promise of clacking teeth in the air
and where are the grownups, who is
in charge in these days of traveling
packs that have taken over
what was once a school, these
halls full of portraits and varied griefs
buried in the garden. Whatever
the children said as the ploughs
covered over all they had longed for, our
books removed from the library like dreams
of intersecting conversation that is
as necessary as bread (not meat), and ours
to lay out on the long tables to
remind the children there is something to give
Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, in several chapbooks, and in journals that include “Pleiades,” “About Place," “Cutthroat,” “Five South,” and “Scientific American.” Founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, they taught math and writing in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.